The Book Manufacturers Institute (BMI), a trade association for book printers and their suppliers in North America, is joining the fight against book bans, Publishers Weekly reports. The association is urging its 110 members to donate to We Are Stronger Than Censorship, an initiative cosponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association and EveryLibrary Institute. If members raise $16,000, BMI will match that donation. We Are Stronger Than Censorship uses donated funds to buy two books from independent publishers for every book that is banned or challenged. The books are then given to schools and libraries targeted by bans and challenges.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a giant of modern African literature, has died at age eighty-seven, the BBC reports. His work, which spanned roughly sixty years, documented the transformation of Kenya from a colonial subject to an independent democracy. Ngũgĩ published his last English-language novel in 1977, after which he vowed only to write in his first language, Kikuyu.

Readers were surprised and disappointed to find an AI prompt in the published version of a fantasy novel, showing the author’s request to copy another writer’s style, Futurism reports. Author Lena McDonald prompted the AI chatbot to rewrite a passage to align more with the style of J. Bree—the human author of an internationally bestselling series of romance and fantasy novels. This incident is yet another demonstration of how Amazon is being overwhelmed with self-published, AI-generated content.

HarperCollins and HQ are launching a new literary fiction imprint called Juniper, which will publish eight to twelve novels a year beginning in spring 2026, the Bookseller reports.

Ellie Berger is stepping down as the president of Scholastic Trade Publishing on June 11, Publishers Weekly reports. Berger started working at Scholastic in 1985 as an associate managing editor and was named publisher of the trade division in 2006. Scholastic will announce plans for replacing Berger shortly.

A new exhibition celebrating the life and legacy of Jane Austen for her 250th anniversary will be open at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City from June 6 through September 14, Fine Books & Collections reports. Among other treasures, the exhibition includes Austen’s only surviving complete fiction manuscript of Lady Susan, her short epistolary novel; a playful letter to her niece; and four of the six known surviving copies of the first American edition of Emma, printed in 1816.

In the Poets on Translation series in Poetry, Geoffrey Brock writes about what we lose in our eagerness to acknowledge what gets lost in translation. “Though the original sounds of a poem do indeed vanish in translation, poetry doesn’t live solely in its sounds,” Brock writes. “There is also something like ‘content’ or ‘meaning,’ which, though often overrated and overemphasized in classrooms, is not nothing. There are also other, often more important qualities: tone or voice, imagery or metaphor or even story; the logic or illogic of a poem that can disrupt or reshape our existing ideas about ourselves or our world; and so on.”

An appeals court has reversed the decision of a district court’s preliminary injunction in a Texas book banning case, Publishers Weekly reports. Seven library patrons in Llano, Texas, filed a lawsuit in April 2022 over the removal of seventeen books from the Llano branch library. The appeals court, however, has dismissed free speech claims, claiming that “plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library’s removal of books,” “a decision that contradicts long-established anti-censorship law including the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Board of Education v. Pico,” according to Publishers Weekly. The ruling also declared that the curation of a library’s collection is “government speech” and therefore not subject to “Free speech challenge.” Activists against book banning found this line of reasoning “devastating” and alarming, noting that this argument lays the groundwork for much more censorship.

Emma Goldberg writes for the New York Times about Sam Freedman’s final semester teaching his legendary class at Columbia Journalism School. In the thirty-five years Freedman has taught the course, there have been 113 book contracts and ninety-five published books out of the 675 students who have taken it.

Shira Perlmutter, the copyright chief who the Trump administration fired from her role on May 10, filed a lawsuit in federal court on May 22 challenging her removal and seeking reinstatement to her position at the U.S. Copyright Office, Publishers Weekly reports. The complaint names multiple defendants including Todd Blanche, who was announced as acting librarian of Congress by Trump; Paul Perkins, who claims to be the new register of copyrights under Blanche; and President Trump himself. Perlmutter is seeking an emergency temporary restraining order and injunctions that would prevent Trump’s new appointees from exercising power in their new roles.

Clare Mulroy writes for USA Today about the danger AI poses to book publishing. Using the AI-generated reading list in the Chicago Sun-Times as an example, Mulroy points out that AI-generated articles could further erode trust in journalism. Furthermore, she argues that as a man-made product, generative AI “can amplify human biases, especially when it comes to representing women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people of color.”

Ahead of Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer, a number of publications have released summer reading lists, including the New York Times, NPR, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post.

The African American Literature Book Club (AALBC) has launched the BLK Bestseller List, which features the bestselling books by Black authors over the last sixteen months, Publishers Weekly reports. The list is one part of the Black Book Accelerator initiative, which seeks to boost the sales of books by Black authors. The group behind the initiative includes AALBC founder Troy Johnson, Hachette chief diversity officer Carrie Bloxson, and Serendipity Literary Agency CEO and president Regina Brooks.

Most of the nearly four hundred books that were removed from the Naval Academy library in April have been returned to the library’s shelves, the Associated Press reports. The original list of books, which included Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, were taken from the library to comply with the Trump administration’s efforts to purge “DEI content” from federal agencies. Earlier in May, the directive changed to pull and review all library books that addressed “diversity, anti-racism, or gender issues,” according to the AP. A temporary academic libraries committee is overseeing the new book review process with search terms that include, “affirmative action, anti-racism, critical race theory, discrimination, diversity, gender dysphoria, gender identity and transition, transgender and white privilege.” The Navy has not confirmed which books have been returned to the library.

Lisa Ko, the author of The Leavers (Algonquin, 2017) and Memory Piece (Riverhead, 2024), posted on Bluesky on Tuesday saying that blurbs she did not write have been attributed to her on the web pages of many books, including several HarperCollins titles, Publishers Lunch reports. A representative for HarperCollins said the error is being fixed, adding, “This was due to a data error in one of our marketing systems and it is being corrected. It was not AI related.”

The International Publishers Association (IPA) has alerted its world membership that Russian publishing figures are being arrested for publishing “LGBT propaganda,” Publishing Perspectives reports. The Russian supreme court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism in November 2023 and characterized the LGBTQ+ “movement” in Russia as “an extremist organization.” Those detained for questioning on May 14 included Anatoly Norovyatkin, the distribution director of the publisher Eksmo; Dmitry Protopopov, a cofounder of Popcorn Books; and Pavel Ivanov, a former sales director. Three people, whose names have not been publicly released, were formally charged on May 15 for “involvement in the activities of an extremist organization,” according to Amnesty International. The Freedom to Publish committee of the IPA has declared support for the arrested individuals and is urging the Russian authorities to drop any charges.

Several former National Ambassadors for Young People’s Literature have announced their opposition to the Trump administration firing Carla Hayden from her role as Librarian of Congress, Publishers Weekly reports. The joint statement decrying the decision was signed by past ambassadors Jon Scieszka, Katherine Paterson, Kate DiCamillo, Gene Luen Yang, Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds, and Meg Medina.

The Chicago Sun-Times has released a response to the May 18 special section that contained a reading list with AI-generated titles of books that do not exist. The statement explains that the section was licensed from King Features, a unit of Hearst, one of the newspaper’s national content partners. The special section was syndicated to the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers. King Features released a statement to Chicago Public Media saying it had “a strict policy with our staff, cartoonists, columnists, and freelance writers against the use of AI to create content. The Heat Index summer supplement was created by a freelance content creator who used AI in its story development without disclosing the use of AI. We are terminating our relationship with this individual.” The Chicago-Sun Times apologized both for printing content that was inaccurate and for not acknowledging “that the section was produced outside the Sun-Times newsroom.” The Sun-Times also announced that subscribers would not be charged for the edition, that the section has been removed from the e-paper version, and that the paper is updating policies so that all third-party licensed editorial content complies with the newspaper’s journalistic standards. The Sun-Times added that it will “explicitly identify third-party licensed editorial content and provide transparency about its origin.”

Social media is influencing how authors promote their books, NPR reports. Over the last few months, authors and content creators have debated the importance of book blurbs, especially because they are time-consuming for authors working on their own books. The online book community is becoming increasingly important for generating buzz about a title, and author Chip Pons, who started as a “bookstagrammer,” says, “I think we are going to start seeing book influencers’ names on the covers of books, on the backs of books.”

Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp (And Other Stories, 2025), translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, is the first story collection to win the International Booker Prize, the New York Times reports. Heart Lamp follows the daily struggles of Indian Muslim women as they navigate their husbands, mothers, and religious leaders. The prize comes with £50,000 (approximately $66,700), which the author and translator split evenly.