A freelance writer is in hot water after the New York Times discovered he used artificial intelligence “to help write a book review that inadvertently incorporated elements of a Guardian review on the same title,” the Wrap reports. The Times has cut ties with the freelancer, Alex Preston, who used AI to write his January 6 review of the novel Watching Over Her (Simon & Schuster, 2026) by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, translated from French by written Frank Wynne, after a reader wrote in to alert the newspaper to the similarities with the Guardian review. “The Times then launched a review and spoke to Preston, who admitted he used an AI tool to help draft the piece and that he failed to catch the Guardian material before the paper published the review.”

The New York Times recently announced updates to its best-seller lists. “With audiobooks making up a larger share of how people consume books, we are broadening our audio offerings by adding two new lists: Audio Children’s (top 15) and Audio Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous (top 10). These additions round out our coverage of the audiobook segment, which currently includes Audio Fiction and Audio Nonfiction, and reflect [the newspaper’s] goal to publish lists that cover different formats through which readers—and increasingly listeners—purchase books.” The newspaper also announced that it would cease publication of the monthly Mass Market list; the weekly Paperback Nonfiction list will shift to monthly. The changes will go into effect online on April 1 and in print on April 12.

The judging panel of the 2026 International Booker Prize today announced the shortlist of six books that are competing for this years’ prize for fiction translated into English. They are The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin; She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel; The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin; On Earth as It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan; The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump; Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King. The winner of the International Booker Prize, which will be announced on May 19, will receive £50,000 (approximately $66,226), with the money divided equally between the winning author and translator. Each shortlisted title will be awarded a prize of £5,000 (approximately $6,622), split between the author and the translator.

New legislation may aid prison libraries in delivering materials and preparing incarcerated individuals to transition home, reports Publishers Weekly. As the majority of the U.S.’s nine-hundred-plus prison libraries are often under-resourced and understaffed, the introduction of the Prison Libraries Act into the U.S. House of Representatives aims to offer one-year grants to “advance reintegration efforts, reduce recidivism, and increase educational opportunities,” per the bill. This would require $10 million in federal spending each year through 2031 and would allow “for more free resources to be made available, for people who are incarcerated to be viewed as members of the public, and for the public to think about how this is for the good of all of us,” says Jeanie Austin, a librarian at the San Francisco Public Library, which has a Jail and Reentry Services department.

Harlequin, a division of HarperCollins known for its romance books, is partnering with the AI entertainment company Dashverse to create microdramas inspired by the imprint’s titles, reports Publishers Lunch. These illustrated short-form videos will be available in English with the goal of offering readers a new way of experiencing beloved books such as Catherine Mann’s A Fairy-Tail Ending and JC Harroway’s Forbidden Fiji Nights With Her Rival. “This partnership with Dashverse represents an exciting opportunity to reimagine these cherished stories for a new audience, leveraging cutting-edge technology to bring them to life in an innovative and engaging medium,” says Harlequin EVP and publisher Brent Lewis.

April 7th is National Black Bookstore Day, established by the National Association of Black Bookstores (NAB2) “to increase visibility, drive engagement, and strengthen the long-term sustainability of Black-owned bookstores.” This nationwide movement is also meant to honor Georgia “Mother Rose” West, founder of Underground Books in Oak Park, California, and a notable figure in the Black literary community who passed in December 2024 at the age of 75. Among the resources the NAB2 provides in association with this special day are a bookstore directory to enable readers to find Black-owned bookstores throughout the U.S. and a report on the current state of Black bookstores, including the fact that Black-owned bookstores represent only eight percent of independent bookstores nationwide. 

Ahead of the 30th annual celebration of National Poetry Month this April, the Academy of American Poets has announced its lineup of festivities: “free programs, resources, and events designed to make poetry accessible to everyone.” Offerings include curation of the Academy’s free Poem-A-Day e-mail series by chancellor emerita Dorianne Laux; free National Poetry Month posters featuring artwork by Alfredo Richner and words from U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze; and the annual Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day, celebrated on April 30. A virtual benefit for the Academy will take place on April 28, with benefits going to the organization’s K-12 poetry education programs.

The European and International Booksellers Federation has issued a statement condemning the arrest of four employees of a Hong Kong bookstore. The founder of the bookshop Book Punch, Pong Yat-ming, has been taken into police custody along with three booksellers from the shop; they stand accused of selling a biography of the imprisoned pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai. “The arrest of booksellers for distributing literature is an attack on the core mission of booksellers to provide access to diverse ideas and on the fundamental principle of intellectual freedom,” reads a statement from the EIBF. “EIBF calls for the immediate release of the arrested booksellers and urges the international community to join us in condemning these actions and to stand in solidarity with booksellers and publishers worldwide who face repression for their work.”

Winners of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) book awards for publishing year 2025 were announced last night at a ceremony in New York City. In a statement to the press, the NBCC spoke to the breadth and impact of this year’s honorees: “This year’s NBCC winners include books on timely and timeless topics: the present and future impact of new technologies, the power of storytelling in shaping a life, the importance of shining a light on forgotten or ignored histories, the lasting repercussions of sexual abuse, the complexity of geopolitics, the beauty of transformative narratives.” Kevin Young (Night Watch, Knopf), Han Kang (We Do Not Part, Hogarth, translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris), Karen Hao (Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, Penguin Press), Alex Green (A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled, Bellevue Literary Press) and Arundhati Roy (Mother Mary Comes to Me, Scribner) took home awards in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, biography, and autobiography, respectively. Critic Rhoda Feng received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, given to an NBCC member for exceptional work in the field. Other honors bestowed included the Toni Morrison Achievement Award, which recognizes “institutions that have made significant contributions to book culture,” and which was was jointly awarded to NPR and PBS. “At a time when some question the value of public, service-minded media, we salute PBS and NPR for all you have done for both book culture and American democracy,” said board member Jacob M. Appel of the award.

Bertelsmann, the parent company of Penguin Random House, is stepping up legal efforts to combat book bans, CEO Thomas Rabe told Reuters. “In January 2025, the Trump administration dismissed 11 complaints related to books banned by local school districts. ‘These are indeed factual book bans,’ Rabe said. Bertelsmann and its publishing arm are contesting ​the measures in ​court, and ⁠the group has so far won every legal case that has been decided, he added.”

“The Gathering,” a poem about the “relentlessness of the news cycle” by Partridge Boswell, has won the National Poetry Competition sponsored by the British arts organization Poetry Society, the Guardian reports. The poem was picked from more than 21,000 entries by poets in 113 countries. Boswell received £5,000 (approximately $6,680). “The speaker reflects on the tensions of personal grief against the backdrop of state violence in Gaza and elsewhere,” the judges said of the winning poem. “How do we maintain language’s potency amid the anaesthetising relentlessness of the news cycle? How do we resist false narratives, eclipsed histories?”

Marianthe Dresios and Omer Korkmaz, both first-year students at Johns Hopkins University, have penned a love letter to the semicolon, the disrespected and little-used punctuation mark that Kurt Vonnegut advised writers to avoid (“All they do is show you’ve been to college,” according to Vonnegut) for the school’s News-Letter. “The semicolon does not draw a sentence to a close. It holds its breath, waiting for the next clause to continue the message of the first. In the same way, the semicolon is not dead; it merely waits for us to love it again.”

The Associated Press reports that Tracy Kidder, the author of a dozen acclaimed nonfiction books, including The Soul of a New Machine (Little, Brown, 1981), which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, has died of lung cancer. He was 80. 

Random House has announced its publication this September of Gloria Steinem’s memoir, An Unexpected Life, Publishers Marketplace reports. “Moving between memory and the present, Steinem examines the progress and setbacks of more than sixty years of activism and offers a message to new generations about what the ongoing fight will require—and the imagination it will demand,” said the publisher in a press release. The book was acquired by Random House vice president and executive editor Jamia Wilson; read a conversation between Wilson and Vivian Lee about Wilson’s beginnings at Feminist Press and the work of building a list in the September/October 2023 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Mystery surrounds a library book conscientiously returned by its reader before its due date—but over 10,500 miles away from where it was checked out, the Express & Star reports. Australian librarian Jessica Berry was baffled to discover a book in her return queue that had come from Gornal Library, a community library in the West Midlands of England. The book, a copy of Gill Hornby’s 2013 best-seller The Hive, has since been returned to Gornal, where it has been withdrawn from circulation. Although the book’s wandering days are over, tales of its exploits live on: “We’ve been entertaining some of our regulars with the story of this novel’s incredible journey,” said library assistant James Windsor.

Six books have been announced as the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction: The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet (Hutchinson Heinemann), Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt (Cornerstone Press), Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell (Picador), Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska (Allen Lane), Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Hamish Hamilton), and Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century by Ece Temelkuran (Canongate). “We awarded the first Women’s Prize for Nonfiction in 2024 because women’s voices were systemically underrepresented in most narrative nonfiction disciplines, as well as being overlooked in review coverage, award recognition and receiving lower advances,” said Claire Shanahan, executive director of the Women’s Prize Trust. “This exceptional shortlist... shines a light on the brilliant women writing such bold and accomplished nonfiction, for the pleasure of all booklovers, everywhere.” This year’s winner will be announced on June 11 at an event in London and will receive £30,000 (approximately $40,140).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named a Global Icon for Bvlgari’s 2026 Carrying Culture campaign, “becoming one of five women chosen by the Italian luxury house to front its Icons Minaudière collection,” according to Brittle Paper. The author of eight books, the most recent of which is the novel Dream Count, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2025, joins Canadian supermodel Linda Evangelista, Italian American actress Isabella Rossellini, South Korean actress Kim Ji-won, and South African architect Sumayya Vally in a campaign photographed by Ethan James Green and designed by Greek fashion designer Mary Katrantzou. (Read the profile of Adichie by Renée H. Shea from the July/August 2009 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.)

Jim Milliot of Publishers Weekly reports on statistics compiled by Bowker that show the total number of books published in the U.S. in 2025 jumped 32.5 percent over 2024, to more than four million books. “The increase was led by self-published works, for which the number of print and e-books...soared 38.7 percent to more than 3.5 million from 2.5 million in 2024.”

In an essay for the New York Times, David Streitfeld looks at the power of book reviews and how, back in 1993 at the Washington Post Book World, before the Jeff Bezos era, a review by Michael Dirda of a misunderstood novel by Annie Proulx had career-changing results for both Proulx and Larry McMurtry, who had been fired from Book World fifteen years earlier. “Here is a tale, in the dark for 30 years, about how book reviews are an engine that helps keep the culture running. It is about what can happen when you’re not ruled by data.”

Henry Grabar of the Atlantic covers the recent revival of Barnes & Noble (B&N). After becoming a private company in 2019, B&N acquired a new CEO, James Daunt, who subsequently changed the trajectory of the company, which was going down in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. Having previously founded an independent bookstore, Daunt changed what he calls B&N’s “retailer’s mindset” by giving authority to the local store managers, so they could choose what books to stock and promote, creating diversification across all stores. As a result, Barnes & Noble opened sixty new stores last year with the goal of doing the same this year as well. Grabar writes: “Daunt believes that Barnes & Noble makes room for a type of book buyer who might not feel at ease in independent bookstores, in which customers, he says, are met with a ‘sort of scrutiny, and also a sense of intellectual expectation.’” B&N is also “a popular stage set for TikToks,” appealing to teenagers with its laid-back atmosphere and wide aisles.