Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, an all-volunteer project to document everything on display at the Smithsonian’s twenty-one museums, the National Zoo, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, plans to make the archive’s photos and videos accessible to the media and the public, according to Library Journal. “The initiative is a response to an August letter sent by the Trump administration to the Smithsonian Institution secretary stating that exhibits were subject to review and revision in an effort to ‘reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.’”

Fantagraphics will launch an imprint dedicated to East Asian comics and graphic novels next spring, Publishers Weekly reports. “Takumigraphics will put out 16 titles per year beginning next spring, with Fantagraphics editor Conrad Groth, president Eric Reynolds, and associate publisher Gary Groth leading acquisitions.”

Yale University has no official policy on the use of artificial intelligence by students in its English deparment, so professors are taking a range of approaches to confronting it, according to a report by Yale News. “There has been ‘no call’ for a department-wide policy, Director of Undergraduate Studies Stefanie Markovits wrote in an e-mail to the News, ‘most likely because we have a general belief in academic freedom in the classroom.’ Professors are adapting in their own ways, but they agree on one thing: AI is detrimental to critical thinking and creative writing.” 

Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior issued a statement apologizing to children’s book author Kate Clanchy for the publisher’s response to an online dispute back in 2021 in which Clanchy “was accused of using racist descriptions of children in her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me,” the BBC reports. Clanchy, whose book won the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2020, says she “never felt supported by them for a minute” and that “they were absolutely unsupportive” through the controversy. “I’m sorry for the hurt that was caused to Kate Clanchy and many others,” Prior said in the statement.

A new French literary award will honor a “French lesbian novel” chosen by a jury of ten artists and book industry professionals, Le Monde reports. On November 7, three days after the Prix Goncourt, or Goncourt Prize, is given by the Académie Goncourt to the author of “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year” in France, the winner of the Prix Gouincourt (“gouine is a slang term for lesbian”) will be announced by organizers Lauriane Nicol and Alex Lachkar.

The next issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is packaged in a nostalgic three-ring “Trapper Keeper–style binder,” according to SFGate. “A few of the standout pieces include an accordion-shaped treatise on flowers by Pulitzer Prize finalist Yiyun Li and a 48-page sketchbook of drawings from Sacramento cartoonist Adrian Tomine. The issue will ship out to the magazine’s nearly 6,000 subscribers, with the remaining 3,000 copies available for sale online and in bookstores for the retail price of $46 on November 20.”

According to Nigel Newton, the founder and CEO of the book publisher Bloomsbury, authors will come to rely on artificial intelligence to help them beat writer’s block, the Guardian reports. “I think AI will probably help creativity, because it will enable the 8 billion people on the planet to get started on some creative area where they might have hesitated to take the first step,” he reportedly told PA Media. Newton is also quoted as saying: “We are programmed deep in our DNA to be comforted by the authority and the reliability of big brand names, and that applies more than ever to the names of big writers.”

Library Journal shares details from Clarivate’s annual “Pulse of the Library” report that shows “a growing number of libraries are exploring or implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025 (67 percent, compared with 63 percent in 2024), although the majority are in the earliest evaluation stages.” The report, based on a survey of 2,032 librarians from 109 countries representing academic, public, and national libraries, “also notes that there is a wide variation between academic and public libraries with AI adoption.”

Publishers Weekly unpacks a recent report from the Association of American Publishers that shows books sales continued to fall in August. “Total industry sales were down 4.4 percent in the month compared to last August and sales fell in every segment. The report, based on data from 1,320 publishers, followed a July report in which total sales were down 4.2 percent.”

Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, laid off thirteen staff members this week, bringing the total number of layoffs to thirty-one in the past few months, KOIN 6 News reports. “As with many businesses right now, we’re seeing expenses rise faster than sales,” a Powell’s spokesperson is quoted as saying.

Porter Anderson of Publishing Perspectives looks at AI usage in the publishing industry, sorting through data revealed in a September 2025 study by the Book Industry Study Group. According to the study, which surveyed people working for publishers, libraries, and service providers or vendors, “slightly lesss than half of inviduals are using AI for work now” and “the majority of organizations that are using AI lack formal policies or guidelines.” The study also shows that “31 percent of respondents said they are ethically opposed to the use of AI; 33 percent said they’re not interested in using AI to support their work; and 43 percent said AI training is not a good use of their time.”

In an essay for the Rumpus, Sean Cho A. writes about the experience of teaching college students during the rise of artificial intelligence. “A chatbot can generate lecture slides with more efficient scaffolding than I ever will. A bot can sort discussion board posts by keyword or sentiment. But bots will never notice the shift in someone’s voice when they say ‘home’ versus when they say ‘mother.’ It will never register the second eye-roll, the one meant not for disdain but for solidarity. It will never mishear ‘Homeric’ as ‘homely’ and accidentally create an entire week’s worth of discussion about what makes a hero.”

Two novels by George Orwell have been translated into Welsh for the first time, the BBC reports. Animal Farm (1945) is set in northwest Wales in the Welsh edition, published by Melin Bapur, “with Orwell’s classic characters given Welsh names to add authenticity,” and 1984, published in 1949, “contains a Welsh version of Newspeak, the novel’s fictional language.”

More than three hundred writers, scholars, and public figures, including past contributors to the newspaper, have refused to write for the New York Times Opinion section in a collective effort “to hold the paper accountable for its role in the genocide in Gaza,” according to the Wire. Among the signatories of the public statement are authors Sally Rooney, Kiese Laymon, Catherine Lacey, Kaveh Akbar, Mosab Abu Toha, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jia Tolentino, and Omar El Akkad.

Sam Spratford of Publishers Weekly writes about a new coworking, continuing education, and community space for writers, agents, and editors in San Francisco. The Backstory Above, opening in the city’s Sunset District on November 1, aims “to help members of the San Francisco literary community deepen their craft, create and collaborate with each other in a peaceful working environment.”

The United States has revoked Nobel Prize–winning author Wole Soyinka’s U.S. visa, Reuters reports.  On Tuesday the author shared a letter from the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos requesting that he “bring his passport for physical cancellation of the visa.” Soyinka, 91, said in 2016 “that he had torn up his U.S. green card and renounced his American residency in protest at the first election of President Donald Trump.”

The UK’s Black British Book Festival is launching a publishing collaboration with Pan Macmillan, “focusing on ‘raw talent,’ in particular writers who have not been traditionally published,” according to the Guardian. The first adult and children’s titles will be commissioned for publication in 2027.

OpenAI’s motion to dismiss a consolidated class action suit over ChatGPT has been denied by a distric court judge in New York, Publishers Lunch reports. “The suit combines lawsuits from authors including Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sarah Silverman, Kai Bird, and Victor LaValle, as well as the Authors Guild, alleging that ChatGPT’s outputs are similar to the authors’ work and constitute copyright infringement.” In denying OpenAI’s motion, the judge determined that the plaintiffs’ argument “is strong enough to go to trial.”

The director of the University of Minnesota Press, Douglas Armato, is retiring after twenty-seven years of leading the Minneapolis-based publisher. “A national search for the next director of the University of Minnesota Press is expected to begin in Fall 2026. Associate Director Susan Doerr and Associate Director for Book Publishing Emily Hamilton will act as co-interim directors until the Press welcomes a new director.”

A coalition of seven charitable foundations—the Ford Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Lannan Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Poetry Foundation, and an anonymous foundation—today announced the launch of the Literary Arts Fund, an effort to “dramatically boost the essential yet critically underfunded nonprofit literary arts field in the United States,” according to a press release from the Mellon Foundation. “The fund, initiated by Mellon as a collaborative effort in service of the field’s needs and promise, will distribute at least $50 million over the next five years, with continued fundraising planned.” The Literary Arts Fund will award grants to U.S. literary nonprofit organizations and publishers that support contemporary writers of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or hybrid literary forms through an annual open call beginning November 10. Full guidelines and eligibility details are available at literaryartsfund.org.