Taiwan Travelogue, a novel by Yang Shuang-zi and translated by Lin King, has been named winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize, the New York Times reports. This is the first book translated from Mandarin and the first by a Taiwanese author to win the award, which includes a prize of £50,000 (approximately $67,000), split evenly between the author and translator. The novel tells the story of a young Japanese novelist who travels to Taiwan in 1938, when the island was occupied by Japan, and falls in love with her female translator. Natasha Brown, an author and the chair of the prize jury, said in a news conference that the book “pulls off an incredible double feat: It succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel.”

James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, said on NBC’s Today that he would support stocking books written by AI in the company’s stores. “As long as an AI-written book says it’s an AI-written book and doesn’t pretend to be something else and isn’t ripping off somebody else, as long as that’s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them,” Daunt said. In 2019, the same year Daunt stepped into his role, the company faced bankruptcy, but in the years since Barnes & Noble has bounced back, opening sixty-seven new stores in 2025 and another sixty this year.

The Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) has announced the finalists for its twelfth annual Firecracker Awards for Independently Published Literature. The annual prizes are awarded in the book categories of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction as well as magazines: for general excellence and best debut. The Firecracker Awards “celebrate the books and magazines that make a significant contribution to our literary culture and the publishers that strive to introduce important voices to readers far and wide.” The winners will be announced on June 25. The winners in the book categories will each receive $2,000 ($1,000 for the press and $1,000 for the author or translator), and those in the magazine categories will each receive $1,000. The winning books will be distributed to over 750 independent booksellers across the country in partnership with the American Booksellers Association, and will be promoted by CLMP.

“The Serpent in the Grove,” a story written by Jamir Nazir and published by Granta in partnership with the Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize, was allegedly AI-generated, Publishers Lunch reports. On Bluesky, fiction writer Christopher Linforth and University of Pennsylvania professor Ethan Mollick separately describe running the story through the AI-checker Pangram, which detected red flags. When Granta learned of these allegations the editors asked Claude.ai whether the story had been written with AI, and the response suggested that the story was “almost certainly not produced unaided by a human,” pointing to passages that are specific enough that it would have been hard for a model to write them unaided. “The intention of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is to find writers from around the Commonwealth and bring them to global attention. It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism—we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never will know,” Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing said in a statement. “There is, however, a certain irony in the fact that beyond human hunches AI itself is the most efficient tool we have for revealing what is AI generated.”

The National Book Foundation announced today that it has elected four new members to its board of directors: Greg Greeley, CEO of Simon & Schuster; Franklin Leonard, founder and CEO of the Black List; Elizabeth McNamara, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine; and Miwa Messer, executive producer of author events and content at Barnes & Noble. The four new members join eighteen others on the organization’s board. “Greg, Franklin, Elizabeth, and Miwa bring significant experience in the literary ecosystem, a deep commitment to the written word, and a shared vision that access to books and reading are for everyone, everywhere,” said Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation. “It is our honor to work alongside them to champion the work of writers and translators and celebrate the joys of reading.”

Sales in the first quarter of 2026 are up among the more than 1,400 publishers who report revenue to the Association of American Publishers, according to Publishers Weekly. Compared to the first quarter of 2025, sales rose 0.9 percent, with increases seen in every category except for adult books and religion. Professional and scholarly books and those from university presses both posted increases of 5.7 percent, and sales of children’s and YA books rose 2.6 percent. “The 2.6 percent increase in the children’s/YA segment was due entirely to a 16.8 percent jump in sales in the relatively small nonfiction category. The two most important formats, paperback and hardcover, had sales of 23.2 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively.”

The Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) have joined forces to issue a new report, How to Protect Against Scammers: A Guide for Authors. This guidance comes on the heels of reports from both organizations that AI scams coaxing writers to pay money or give up rights to their work are becoming a more pressing issue on both sides of the pond. “Even the most vigilant of writers are understandably falling prey to these scams,” WGGB General Secretary Ellie Peers said. “We therefore hope that our new joint guidance with the Society of Authors will help authors assess whether opportunities are genuine or fraudulent, provide practical actions they can take to protect themselves, and signpost sources of further support and expert advice.” For more information, read “Beware of Scams Targeting Writers,” a collection of coverage from Poets & Writers Magazine.

New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani announced on Friday that the 2027 Fiscal Year Budget will add $31.7 million in permanent funding to the baseline for the city’s three public library systems: the Queens Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the New York Public Library. In the past, it wasn’t a guarantee that New York’s libraries would have funding restored each year, creating uncertainty around long-term decisions. “For too long, library funding has been treated like a political bargaining chip and fought over every single year,” Mayor Mamdani said at a press conference. “By baselining this funding, we are giving every branch in every borough the stability to plan ahead, hire staff and serve New Yorkers without wondering if the money will disappear next spring.”

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have discovered the oldest-surviving English poem, the Associated Press reports. The Old English verse, “Caedmon’s Hymn,” was written by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the seventh century and unearthed within a manuscript of a Latin ecclesiastical history dating back to the ninth century. “Prior to the discovery of [this] manuscript, the earliest one was from the early twelfth century. So this is three centuries earlier than that. And so it attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early [ninth] century,” Mark Faulkner, an associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity, told the AP. It appears that Caedmon wrote these lines after attending a feast where others were reciting poetry, prompting him to excuse himself because he was embarrassed that he didn’t have anything to contribute.

Prolific audiobook narrator Lindsay Dorcus is among a group of six Illinois voice actors, podcasters, and journalists bringing class action lawsuits against tech companies that trained AI models on their “voice footprints,” Publishers Lunch reports. Nine separate lawsuits brought against Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, ElevenLabs, Adobe, and Samsung allege that the vocal talents’ works were “scraped” from internet sources for training purposes without the narrators’ consent, a violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). “The Amazon suit is particularly pointed on the topic of audiobook narration, claiming that Amazon’s ignoring BIPA was ‘a deliberate institutional decision.’”

“Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered a remarkable combination of Homeric epic and Egyptian ritual: a 2,000-year-old mummy with a papyrus fragment of the Iliad sealed in a clay packet outside its wrappings,” the New York Times reports. The papyrus fragment was unearthed at a burial site known as Oxyrhynchus, where it accompanied the mummy of a non-royal male, bundled close to the body. Scholars speculate that the passage served as more than good reading on the long path to eternity: “For a Roman-era Egyptian, the Iliad—specifically some lines from Book 2’s ‘Catalogue of Ships’—was perhaps as crucial for navigating the afterlife as a magical spell.” 

Final approval of a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and authors whose works were used to train its AI model Claude stalled yesterday as the judge in the case asked for more details about “issues including lawyers’ fees and payments to lead ​plaintiffs in what is the largest known U.S. copyright settlement,” Reuters reports. The settlement had received initial approval from Judge William Alsup, now retired, in September 2025, making it the first major U.S. case settled concerning authors’ rights in the training of AI. “Authors and other copyright holders filed claims covering over 92 percent of the more than 480,000 works included in the settlement, an attorney for the authors said during the hearing. The settlement has ​spurred objections from authors who have argued it is not large enough, overcompensates ​the plaintiffs’ attorneys, or wrongly excludes some copyright owners.”

American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney has won the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for her debut collection, Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2025). She received £20,000 (approximately $26,794). The other poet shortlisted for this year’s prize were Harriet Armstrong for To Rest Our Minds and Bodies (Les Fugitives), Colwill Brown for We Pretty Pieces of Flesh (Vintage), Suzannah V. Evans for Under the Blue (Bloomsbury), Seán Hewitt for Open, Heaven (Vintage), and Derek Owusu for Borderline Fiction (Canongate). The judges were Irenosen Okojie, Joe Dunthorne, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Prajwal Parajuly, and Eley Williams. The annual award celebrates “exceptional literary talent” under the age of forty. 

The New York Public Library and Random House Publishing Group are partnering to offer the Kate Medina Fellowship for Literary Narrative Nonfiction to support writers whose projects “engage meaningfully” with the library’s onsite collections, including manuscripts, archives, books, photographs, prints, maps, newspapers, and journals. The selected fellow will receive a stipend of $30,000 to support four months of research between September 1, 2026, and March 15, 2027. Applications are due June 15.

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller list for the week ending May 10, 2026. The list is compiled in partnership with the American Booksellers Association and identifies “the top titles from independent presses as represented at independent bookstores across the U.S.” The top five titles are: 1. The Calamity Club (Spiegel & Grau) by Kathryn Stockett, 2. John of John (Grove Press) by Douglas Stuart, 3. Heart the Lover (Grove Press) by Lily King, 4. I Who Have Never Known Men (Transit Books) by Jacqueline Harpman, and 5. On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) (New Directions) by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland.

Lee Lai has won Australia’s Stella Prize, becoming the first nonbinary writer and first graphic novelist to take home the prestigious award, the Guardian reports. Lai receives the $60,000 honor for her book Cannon, published by Canadian press Drawn + Quarterly. The book follows a queer Chinese woman living in Montreal who cares for an aging relative by day and works at an upscale restaurant by night. The Stella Prize is offered by the nonprofit Stella, which describes itself as “the major voice for gender equity and cultural change in Australian literature;” the prize was opened to nonbinary writers in 2021.

Hachette Book Group leadership has launched a campaign to dissuade its employees from seeking to unionize, Publishers Lunch reports. With headings including “Why We Believe Hachette Is Stronger Without a Union” and “What You Could Lose With Union Negotiation,” a series of electronic messages and flyers posted around the Hachette offices present the company’s talking points. Hachette Workers Coalition responded online, arguing that the corporate messages “[frame] the union as a third party that will harm our existing benefits and workplace culture. ...But the union is all of us, and we won’t be intimidated.”

Texas Book Festival has announced its launch of Burro Libro Press, a new imprint that will focus on “discovering and publishing debut literary fiction by emerging writers with strong ties to Texas.” Developed in collaboration with the Austin-based indie press Deep Vellum Publishing, Burro Libro will find authors through an annual first book contest in which winners will receive publication, $5,000, a professionally-produced audiobook, and promotion at the Texas Book Festival. Submission for the inaugural contest will be open from June 1 to June 30. “We are excited to partner with Texas Book Festival on a program that creates new opportunities for debut fiction writers connected to Texas,” said Jill Meyers, editorial director of Deep Vellum, in a press release. “Deep Vellum has always believed in championing ambitious literary voices, and this collaboration allows us to support emerging authors in a meaningful and lasting way while deepening our partnership with Texas Book Festival.”

Writer Beware provides examples of the latest scams targeting writers, including an e-mail invitation to be a featured guest at a book festival or conference event and an offer to be interviewed on a radio show or podcast. “Unfortunately, AI-driven impersonation scams have glommed onto these events in a big way,” writes Victoria Strauss. “I’m getting a growing number of reports from writers who’ve received credible-seeming invitations that have turned out to be completely fake. It’s yet another area where writers must be extremely careful not to take anything at face value.” Among the details to look out for: “a Gmail, or occasionally an AOL, e-mail address where you’d normally expect the contact to come from a company or event email domain.”

Less than three weeks away from Pride Month, Kelly Jensen of Book Riot has released her annual guide to Pride displays in libraries. Intended primarily “to help library workers consider where and how to showcase LGBTQ+ books, programs, and other materials throughout June,” this year’s overview provides information about what to do if you see instances of censorship and how to write to your local library board about offering LGBTQ+ books and LGBTQ+ programming. “For libraries, Pride has traditionally been a month for joyful displays of queer books, with periodic and predictable complaints,” Jensen writes. “But several years into surging book bans, escalating violence, and swift-rising fascism, it is important to prepare for the upcoming month of events to anticipate all that has, does, and might arise.”