OpenAI has declared the AI race with China will be “over” if training AI on copyrighted works is not considered fair use, Ars Technica reports. While rights holders say AI models trained on creative works threaten their value in markets and weaken humanity’s creative output, AI companies are arguing that AI transforms the copyrighted works it trains on. OpenAI is now appealing to Trump, requesting legal protection from the hundreds of state laws attempting to regulate AI, and asking the president to support the AI industry’s “freedom to learn.”

Shelly C. Lowe, a scholar of higher education and the first Native American to serve as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), has left her position “at the direction of President Trump,” the New York Times reports. Agency chairs typically serve four-year terms, though some continue in their roles despite changing administrations. Founded in 1965, the NEH has awarded more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historic sites, universities, libraries, and other organizations. Lowe’s departure comes amidst Trump’s upheaval of cultural agencies, including the Kennedy Center, where he fired Biden appointees from the bipartisan board, dismissed the center’s president, and had himself elected chairman.

The 2025 David Ruggles Prize, established to support young book collectors of color, is open for entries until June 8, Fine Books & Collections reports. The international prize is open to any collector aged thirty-five or younger. Collections need not consist of only traditional books—comic books, graphic novels, zines, contemporary book art, and handwritten manuscripts all count. The grand prize is $1,000, the second prize is $500, and the third prize is $250. The award is named for David Ruggles, an American abolitionist, publisher, and Underground Railroad conductor, who opened the country’s first Black-owned bookstore.

Wiley released detailed guidance for authors on how they can use AI ethically and effectively in their research and writing, Publishers Weekly reports. The guidelines address the development of effective prompts when using AI, the comparison and assessment of AI tools for accuracy, privacy, and intellectual property, and the disclosure of AI usage in published works.

Alissa Quart writes for Time magazine about why she is replacing the endless scroll of depressing news with poetry. In poetry, she writes, “I have…found a reprieve from my anxious inattention.” “More specifically,” she has sought out “the poetry of survival—verse written in the shadow of political extremity.” Poems, Quart adds, “can ultimately offer us some moral direction.”

The nonprofit We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is launching its inaugural “We Need Diverse Books Day” on April 3 to underscore the importance of access to inclusive reading, USA Today reports. WNDB will celebrate its tenth anniversary of programming this year by donating ten thousand titles to schools and libraries across the country. A 2023 study conducted by the nonprofit First Book found that students read more when educators add diverse books to their libraries. While 99 percent of surveyed educators agreed that a diverse library is vital, only 58 percent said their library is as diverse as their students.

Author Jesmyn Ward discusses the rewards of reading laborious novels with the New Yorker and recommends some of her favorites. Ward’s list includes books written in a range of styles and time periods, such as the 1923 novel Cane by Jean Toomer, Toni Morrison’s 1987 classic, Beloved, and Bunny (Viking, 2019) by Mona Awad. Ward says, “Sometimes being bewildered is just part of reading,” adding, “Anytime that a story asks you to do a lot of work to understand the world and the characters being constructed, there’s something to be learned.”

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote, “We trained a new model that is good at creative writing,” adding that it was the first time he has “been really struck by something written by AI,” the Guardian reports. Altman’s comments come amidst a series of lawsuits against tech companies for training artificial intelligence on material protected by copyright.

The majority of books banned during the 2023–2024 school year featured characters of color and LGBTQ+ characters and subjects, USA Today reports (via PEN America). Of all the history and biography titles banned, 44 percent featured people of color. The states with the most book bans were Florida and Iowa.

Five years after the outbreak of COVID-19, Lily Meyer writes for the Atlantic about the pandemic novel she is still searching for, one “that truly submits to the uncontrollable reality” of that time. She writes: “All of my searching for a great pandemic novel has taught me that real literature about crisis has to come from more than anger or terror, more than the fundamentally self-centered impulse to say something or to add my memories to the general consciousness.”

A new report released at the London Book Fair showed that fiction sales are growing in global book markets, while nonfiction sales are struggling, Publishers Weekly reports. According to an analysis of eighteen territories, sixteen markets showed significant revenue for fiction, whereas only six regions showed growth in nonfiction, and at mostly lower rates than fiction. The report also identified social media, and particularly BookTok, as a major engine behind romance and fantasy sales.

Robert Rubsam writes for the New York Times about how Netflix has been buying the rights to renowned novels from around the world. The streaming platform has spent hundreds of millions of dollars adapting novels such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (2017), and Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2008). But Rubsam is unconvinced by the site and its apparently endless trove of accessible content. “It seems the aim, in Netflix’s world, is to put the text onscreen in a way that is maximally legible,” he writes, “with none of the experimentation that might allow an adaptation to become an autonomous work of art.”

Apple Original Films will develop Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels with Martin Scorsese writing, directing, and producing alongside filmmaker Todd Field, Publishers Weekly reports. Scorsese will start with Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), the second of four novels in the Gilead series, and Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star in the feature film.

For Poetry, Mia You writes about translating Korean poetry into English, the power of ambiguity when moving between languages, and the many ways “English is being used both communicatively and creatively by so many non-native speakers.” You wonders: “Who belongs to a language? To whom does a language belong?”

Netgalley is launching a consumer marketing platform called Booktrovert, Publishers Lunch reports. According to its press release, Booktrovert will help readers “celebrate their love of books by participating in digital giveaways, special promotions, and fun bookish activities.” Publishers, writers, and publicists will be able to start setting up book giveaways in early April. Netgalley has reorganized its staff in anticipation of the launch.

One day after the ACLU’s lawsuit, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) removed President Trump’s “gender ideology” requirements, which prohibited arts organizations from receiving funding for projects related to gender expression, the Wrap reports. The outcome of the case is still pending, but for now, organizations can apply for NEA funding without adhering to Trump’s previous stipulations.

Zando will acquire Tin House Books, Katy Hershberger reports for Publishers Lunch. The announcement states, “Zando plans to elevate the impact of Tin House’s existing, illustrious backlist, activating Zando’s own robust publishing infrastructure to enhance sales, marketing, and distribution efficiencies for Tin House titles.” Tin House founder Win McCormack will continue “his association with the list” as chair of Tin House and Tin House editorial director Masie Cochran will become an editorial leader at Zando. Hershberger writes: “The company plans to release new Tin House titles, retaining the publisher’s name, starting in 2026. Tin House’s workshops and podcast aren’t included in the acquisition, and will remain separate, though still with the Tin House moniker.”

Boris Kachka writes for the Atlantic about the role politics should play in fiction. “We don’t live in a time when politics can be cordoned off from art; it permeates the world,” he writes, “and a novel without much of it would be difficult to believe.”

Marc Weingarten writes for the Los Angeles Times about a new book by Alissa Wilkinson that explores Joan Didion’s open fascination with Hollywood and John Wayne, even though the author was otherwise famously reserved. Preoccupied with the line between mythmaking and truth-telling, Didion had a “creeping cynicism toward politics and its appropriation of movie style,” but didn’t lose “her ardor for film,” Weingarten writes.

Sally Kim, the president and publisher of Little, Brown (and a member of the board of directors of Poets & Writers), discusses the trajectory of her publishing career with the New York Times. Kim speaks to her experience as the first Asian American woman in her position within the Hachette Book Group: “Ten years ago,” she says, “they never would have hired someone like me for this position. Coming up in publishing, I had no one who looked like me, especially in editorial.” She adds, “I spent my early years trying to conform, to play by the rules,” but now, she says, “I realize I cannot extract my identity and my Asian Americanness.”