The Charles Dickens Museum will celebrate its hundredth anniversary on June 9 by offering free entry to the author’s former home in London, the BBC reports. Visitors can meet Dickens’s living descendants and attend readings and talks that will take place in each of the museum’s historic rooms.

The annual PEN America Literary Awards were held Thursday in New York City after a turbulent year of protests over the organization’s response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Publishers Weekly reports. Multiple writers withdrew their books from consideration, so for the second year in a row, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award was not conferred. In lieu of an author receiving the $75,000 prize, the funds will be divided between two nonprofits: the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which provides “humanitarian aid for children living among devastation and displacement,” and Palestine Legal, “a legal aid organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom.” Seven of the fifty-five finalists across eleven award categories withdrew their works from consideration this year.

Trump has fired Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, who was the first woman and the first African American to hold the position, the Washington Post reports. Hayden previously led Baltimore’s library system and served as president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004. In a statement, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut) called for the White House to explain its decision, writing, “Every Member of Congress I know—Democratic or Republican—loves and respects Dr. Carla Hayden…. [Her] tenure has been marked by a steadfast commitment to accessibility, modernization, and the democratization of knowledge. Her dismissal is not just an affront to her historic service but a direct attack on the independence of one of our most revered institutions.”

In a statement to Retail Brew, Amazon claimed its annual book sale “unintentionally overlapped” with Independent Bookstore Day on April 26, but Amazon did not promise to avoid the national indies sales event in the future. This year, Amazon held its annual book sale from April 23 to April 28, which Ray T. Daniels, the chief communications officer of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) criticized as “predatory.” Ironically, Amazon’s ill-timed sale may have driven even more customers to indies this year in protest. Among the 560 bookstores that use ABA’s e-commerce platform, there was a 77.41 percent increase in online sales over Independent Bookstore Day in 2024. Bookshop.org also saw a 170 percent sales increase over last year.

Though the consequences of tariffs on the book publishing industry could lead to declines in discretionary spending, a new report from BookScan suggests books are in a better position than many other goods, Publishers Weekly reports. In times of economic uncertainty, the report notes, “consumers are more likely to pull back spend on higher-ticket items, like technology and apparel, and favor items that they see as having a high perceived value, like books.” A significant data point from BookScan’s analysis is that 50 percent of new book buyers report that they are reading somewhat more or much more compared to the same time a year ago. This increased engagement with books, the study found, will likely benefit sales in the near-term.

Alexandra Alter writes for the New York Times about the complicated deliberation process that led to Percival Everett winning the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for James (Doubleday). The prize went to Everett after the Pulitzer committee’s board could not agree on the three finalists that the fiction jury initially presented: Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot (Viking), Stacey Levine’s Mice 1961 (Verse Chorus Press), and Gayl Jones’s The Unicorn Woman (Beacon Press). Alter notes that “some observers expressed skepticism about this year’s process,” quoting the writer and bookseller Drew Broussard, who questioned whether the Pulitzer board had overruled the jury’s selections of a “world-shaking all-woman trio of finalists in a year when one novel by a male writer has taken up quite a lot of the available oxygen.” But Levine, one of the finalists, dismissed that speculation, emphasizing that in a moment when diversity initiatives and public funding for the arts are in danger, the Pulitzer Prize stands for integrity. In an e-mail, Levine wrote, “Percival’s book is so important in this regard…. Is this really the time to fuss about what might or might not be gender politics in a literary contest?”

Lawrence Venuti writes about the dilemmas facing contemporary translation and its commentary for Public Books. “Translation is imagined as mechanical transfer,” he writes, “so transparent as to be invisible, not particularly resourceful or creative, certainly not an interpretive act in its own right. Would we get a different view of translation,” he asks, “one that is both more illuminating and more appreciative, if we turned to translators themselves?”

Ploughshares has appointed Jenny Molberg as its new editor in chief. Molberg joins Ploughshares from the University of Central Missouri where she worked as a professor of creative writing, directed Pleiades Press, and edited Pleiades: Literature in Context. In addition to serving as the new editor in chief of Ploughshares, she will work as a professor of writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College in Boston. In a letter announcing her new role, Molberg wrote, “I think of great writing as advocacy for conditions of peace—a repurposing of toxic power and suffering—a call for action, for radical joy. Through this lens, I recognize my responsibilities to the authors I help edit and usher into the world, the students I teach, and the literary world writ large.”

The District Court of Rhode Island has granted twenty-one states’ attorneys general the preliminary injunction they sought to stop the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and two other federal agencies, Publishers Weekly reports. The judge overseeing the case emphasized that Congress controls the agencies and designates their funding, adding that Trump’s executive order “disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government.”

The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association has announced Bernard Shapero as its new president, Fine Books & Collections reports. Shapero joins with forty-five years of experience in the rare book world and runs his own bookshop and gallery in London called Shapero Rare Books. He said, “I look forward to working with all our members to carry on with their good work and hope that the rare book world will continue to thrive in the U.K.”

Globe Pequot Publishing Group has acquired Bower House Books, an independent press based in Denver, Publishers Weekly reports. The acquisition is Globe Pequot’s third this year, following the purchase of Square One Publishers last week and the purchase of Waterford Press in March. After selling the academic publisher Rowman and Littlefield to Bloomsbury for $83 million last year, Globe Pequot has been focusing more on trade publishing.

The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday by Columbia University. Percival Everett won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for James (Doubleday); Marie Howe won the prize in poetry for New and Selected Poems (Norton); Edda L. Fields-Black won the prize in history for Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War (Oxford University Press) along with Kathleen DuVal for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America (Random House); Jason Roberts won the prize in biography for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life (Random House); Tessa Hulls won the prize in memoir or autobiography for Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD); and Benjamin Nathans won the prize in general nonfiction for To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press). The winners each received $15,000.

A group of senior officials at the NEA have announced their resignations, Michael Paulson reports for the New York Times. “Among those leaving the agency are directors overseeing grants for dance, design, folk and traditional arts, and theater, as well as the director of the ‘partnership’ division, which oversees work with state and local arts agencies,” Paulson writes. Amy Stolls, literary arts director, is among those leaving the agency, as previously reported.

Publishers Weekly has reported more details about the termination of dozens of NEA grants as well as staff changes at the agency in light of Trump’s executive orders and Friday’s budget proposal.

The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses and LitNet, a coalition of literary organizations that works to promote the importance of the literary arts in American culture and build the capacity of the literary field, sent members an e-mail this morning from four members of the Literary Arts staff of the NEA, including Amy Stolls, Literary Arts Director, informing them that their last day at the agency will be May 30, Publishers Lunch reports.

Author Canisia Lubrin, primarily known for her poetry, has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, which celebrates women and nonbinary storytellers in the U.S. and Canada and awards $150,000 annually, NPR reports. Lubrin’s debut fiction work, Code Noir (Soft Skull), is composed of fifty-nine short stories that explore the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and violence in France and the French colonies.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has rescinded grants to numerous publishers relying on federal funding for the 2025 fiscal year, the Washington Post reports. Mary Gannon, the executive director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), called the news “a tremendous blow for publishing.” According to data gathered by CLMP, of the fifty-one small publishers who receive funding from the NEA, at least thirty have had their grants terminated, including Deep Vellum, the Paris Review, and the Oxford American.

Following the release on Friday of President Trump’s budget proposal that would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as well as other arts agencies, the NEA began withdrawing and cancelling grant offers to arts organizations around the country, the New York Times reports. “The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the president,” a portion of the e-mail said. “Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities.”

In his budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, released on Friday, President Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) along with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, the New York Times reports. They were listed in a section of the document titled “small agency eliminations.” The president tried to eliminate both the NEA and the NEH during his first term, but was unsuccessful due to bipartisan support of the agencies. 

Judge Richard J. Leon has agreed to “grant in part” the temporary restraining order requested by the American Library Association (ALA) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to “prevent additional harm” to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Publishers Weekly reports. In a statement, ALA president Cindy Hohl said, “The immediate halt to the gutting of IMLS is a win for America's libraries and the millions of Americans who rely on them.” Trump’s administration has been attempting to dismantle the IMLS, with only twelve of approximately seventy-five employees remaining at the agency and the rest on administrative leave since April 4. In their lawsuit, the ALA and AFSCME have been advocating for a preliminary injunction to prohibit further destruction of the IMLS.