Jeff Shotts has been announced as the winner of the 2026 A.P. Anderson Award, bestowed by the Anderson Center at Tower View to honor an individual for “significant contributions to the cultural and artistic life of Minnesota.” An editor at Graywolf Press for nearly thirty years and the press’s current executive editor, Shotts has acquired and edited works that have received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and awards from the National Book Critics Circle, among other accolades. “Editors... work in the shadows and rarely get the acclaim they deserve,” wrote Dobby Gibson, one of Shotts’s nominators, in a statement shared by the Anderson Center. “Jeff’s work at Graywolf has strengthened Minnesota’s stature as a center of literary arts. By nurturing world-class talent from Minnesota and beyond, he ensures the Twin Cities are not just a regional hub but a national and international presence in literature. And most important of all, Jeff has ensured Graywolf—and by extension Minnesota—fosters a culture of literary risk, innovation, and excellence.”
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Every day the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine scan the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know.
For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter considers the curious case of Shy Girl, the buzzy self-published horror novel picked up by Hachette—and then pulled from publication after evidence of AI use in its authorship. After online speculation about the book’s voice and the telltale tics of AI, Max Spero, the founder and chief executive of the AI-detection company Pangram, ran the book through its software, finding that an estimated 78 percent of the book was AI-generated. Hachette subsequently cancelled the book’s planned publication in the United States and ceased printing the title in the U.K. While AI has roiled the online book marketplace for time, Shy Girl may be the “first commercial novel from a major publishing house to be pulled over evidence of AI use. Its cancellation is a sign that AI writing is not only appearing in cheap self-published e-books that are flooding Amazon but is seeping into even traditionally published fiction.”
Amazon Literary Partnership has opened applications for its 2026 grants cycle, offering funding to “literary nonprofits with the aim of empowering writers, helping them create, publish, learn, teach, experiment, and thrive.” Grants are awarded in amounts ranging from $5,000 to $20,000; in 2025, ninety-nine Amazon Literary Partnership grants offered a total of $1 million in funding to organizations across the United States. Recent recipients of grants include the National Book Foundation, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Girls Write Now, and Cave Canem. Applications for this year’s grants are due May 1. Recepients will be announced in July.
Utah has added another book to its list of banned titles, reports The Salt Lake Tribune. Looking for Alaska (Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2005) by John Green is now the twenty-eighth title to be banned from Utah public schools. This young adult fiction book was also among the top fifty-two books banned from U.S. schools in 2025, according to PEN America. Utah law requires that a title be banned from public schools if at least three school districts determine there to be indecent content found within. On Green’s website, he states that a sex scene from the book is frequently the most cited reason for why it has been banned.
Smithsonian Magazine covers a new exhibition at Yale Library that explores the history of typos across five hundred years. Entitled “‘Beauties of My Style’: Errata and the Printed Mistake” and opening on March 30 at the university’s Sterling Memorial Library, this exhibition shows errors found in Ulysses, the Bible, and many more well-known titles. According to the library, “errors committed” lists—acknowledging typos and including apologies and additions—first appeared in the fifteenth century, with authors placing these slips in the back of their books. The exhibition looks at errata lists alongside their respective texts, exploring themes such as “censorship, misrepresentation, intervention, and instability,” per the library’s statement.
The executive director of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Paula M. Krebs, will be stepping down from her position in 2027. Having been with the MLA for close to a decade, Krebs has led the association “through a period of significant evolution, guiding the organization as it strategized to respond to the impact of new technologies, the COVID-19 pandemic, and legislative challenges to higher education.” Of her time spent with the MLA, Krebs notes, “As a first-generation college student, I’ve always had a bit of an outsider perspective, and this organization welcomed that, allowing me to take some risks and try some new things.” The executive council plans to start searching for Krebs’s replacement in the coming weeks.
Publishers Weekly reports on the surprise Chapter 11 filing of Baker & Taylor, which reveals debts to thousands of creditors that are estimated to total between $100 million and $500 million; the company’s estimated remaining assets are valued at $1 million to $10 million. Those owed money include Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins, which are due $23.4 million, $16.4 million, and $15.6 million respectively; Ingram, Wiley, Norton, and multiple public libraries are also on the list of those to whom Baker & Taylor is in debt. “Given the huge gap between Baker & Taylor’s assets and what they owe their creditors, one observer told Publishers Weekly that companies will be lucky to receive pennies on the dollar.”
Six novels have been announced as the shortlist for the second annual Climate Fiction Prize: Dusk by Robbie Arnott (Chatto & Windus), The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha (John Murray Press), Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan (Simon & Schuster) Hum by Helen Phillips (Atlantic Books), Endling by Maria Reva (Virago), and The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien (Granta Books). Sponsored by the British nonprofit Climate Spring, the prize “celebrates the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis” as part of the organization’s broader mission to leverage the power of storytelling to address climate change. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced May 27 and will receive £10,000 (approximately $13,300).
Publishers Lunch reports that book distributor Baker & Taylor is set to close in January 2027. The news comes on the heels of the failed acquisition of the company’s assets by distributor ReaderLink last month. Local news reports that 253 of the 318 of the employees at the company’s warehouse in Momence, Illinois, learned yesterday that they had lost their positions; the remaining employees will assist in winding down operations through the end of the year. One of the oldest companies in the book industry, Baker & Taylor “was the largest supplier of materials to libraries, and B&T Publisher Services distributes books from more than 250 small presses. Small publishers are particularly in need of distribution services after the closure of Small Press Distribution.”
The Los Angeles Times uncovers a trend in book jacket design marked by childlike sketches, doodles, and crayon marks. “The more childish and unrefined, the better,” Maddie Connors writes. The “naive design” trend reportedly appeals to millennials and Gen Z readers. “The book cover trend, imbued with nostalgia for childhood, promises fiction that grapples with the pangs of adulthood in an age of precarity.” Examples of the design can be found on the covers of books by Madeline Cash and Cazzie David.
Virginia Evans is the winner of the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel for The Correspondent (Crown), the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced. Judges Rachel Beanland, Dionne Irving, and Taymour Soomro considered 146 eligible novels by American authors published in the United States during the 2025 calendar year. Submissions came from 59 publishing houses, including small and academic presses. Evans will receive $10,000. The other finalists were Susanna Kwan for Awake in the Floating City (Pantheon) and Maggie Su for Blob: A Love Story (Harper).
Jaime Leifer has been named publishing director of Bloomsbury US’s adult trade division, according to Publishers Weekly. “Leifer will oversee the adult literary fiction list alongside the division’s nonfiction list, which the publisher hopes to expand.”
An author in Utah has been convicted of “aggravated murder after poisoning her husband with fentanyl and then self-publishing a children’s book about coping with grief,” the Guardian reports. Prosecutors say Kouri Richins gave her husband five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid by mixing it in a cocktail that he drank in March 2022. The couple were $4.5 million in debt; Richins reportedly believed she would inherit her husband’s estate, valued at more than $4 million, after his death.
Comic book retailers are adopting BookTok-style videos to help increase store sales, reports Publishers Weekly. Creating content for a younger, online demographic, these booksellers are employing a variety of social-media-savvy techniques, including posting reels and creating videos in which they speak with comics creators, utilize puppets to share reviews of recent releases, drink wine while discussing new books, and more. One such comic store owner, Jen King of Space Cadets in Shenandoah, Texas, says, “When they see what people are like in the community, and how we talk to each other, they realize, Oh wait, they’re just like my friends. I’m not any different in person. The person they see on the screen is really me.”
Jack Kerouac’s original typescript scroll of the first draft of On The Road has sold for upwards of $12 million, making it the most expensive literary manuscript to sell at an auction, reports Fine Books & Collections. Typed with no paragraphs or chapter breaks, and measuring 119 feet long by 9 inches wide, the famous scroll “features occasional cross-outs by repeated ‘x’s, and numerous penciled deletions and word changes, in some cases substituting fictional names for the real names of himself and his companions, plus marginal notes in pencil by Kerouac.” Singer-songwriter Zach Bryan bought the literary work of art, having previously purchased a church in the author’s hometown that he plans to turn into a Kerouac museum.
Four years following his survival of an assassination attempt, Salman Rushdie says he’s tired of being everyone’s “free speech Barbie,” reports the Guardian. During this year’s New Orleans Book Festival, Rushdie spoke with the Atlantic’s George Packer, saying, “it’s a little frustrating to be not known for a book—but for something that happened to a book,” referring to the attacker that stabbed him onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York in 2022 due to his having written The Satanic Verses (Viking, 1989). Wanting to focus more on his writing than the incident, Rushdie mentioned his return to fiction, and his most recent short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, published by Random House last November.
For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter spoke to acclaimed writers about a key element of their practice: the company of dogs. Authors including Alice Hoffman, editor of the new anthology The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love, and anthology contributors Roxane Gay, Amy Tan, and Paul Yoon reflected on the singular gift of a dog’s company at the writing desk. Some literary familiars even know when it’s time to call it a day, as with novelist Ann Leary’s dog, Eddie. “When he thinks she’s done enough work, he closes her laptop with his paw,” writes Alter.
Ten-time Grammy winner Billie Eilish is in final talks to make her screen debut in a film adaptation of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s iconic 1963 best-seller, Deadline reports. The film will be directed by Oscar winner Sarah Polley, whose ouevre includes the acclaimed literary adapation Women Talking, based on the Miriam Toews book of the same name. Eilish will play the part of Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of Plath’s novel drawn from experiences of her own adolescence. Previously, Julia Stiles and Kirsten Dunst have been attached to plans to adapt the novel but no such films have come to fruition.
The buzziest books on #BookTok are about to find their way to the top of an official #BookTok chart in the U.K., the Guardian reports. The new chart will launch later this month, offering a ranked list of twenty titles that are “resonating most strongly with readers online.” The ranking will “combine verified retail sales data with social media engagement,” using data about engagement provided by TikTok and sales figures drawn from NielsenIQ BookData. Both popularity metrics will be integrated using an algorithm developed by NielsenIQ BookData partner Media Control to arrive at the final ranking. Nielsen IQ and Media Control described the significance of the new chart, which creates “for the first time, a reliable data-based link between social media resonance and real sales performance” as #BookTok continues to drive book sales worldwide.
The tech company behind Grammarly is facing a class action lawsuit over an AI tool that the writing software implements to offer editing suggestions to users from the perspective of well-known writers and academics, “none of whom consented to have their names appear within the product,” reports Miles Klee for Wired. Award-winning journalist Julia Angwin is the only plaintiff named in the suit, as her name, alongside Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson, was offered via Grammarly’s “Expert Review” tool. The suit states that Angwin “challenges Grammarly’s misappropriation of the names and identities of hundreds of journalists, authors, writers, and editors to earn profits for Grammarly and its owner, Superhuman.”
The L.A. Times Festival of Books, taking place on April 18 and 19 this year and including almost 100 panels/programs as well as 550 storytellers, recently announced a literary lineup that includes Roxane Gay and Margaret Atwood, alongside recent Booker Prize judge Sarah Jessica Parker. Comedian Larry David, musician Lionel Richie, and scholar Reza Aslan will also be featured. As part of the festival, on April 17 the forty-sixth annual L.A. Times Book Prizes will be held, honoring Amy Tan with the Robert Kirsch Award, We Need Diverse Books with the Innovator’s Award, and Adam Ross with the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, alongside many others.
Returning this year after being on hiatus since 2019, the Indies Choice Book Awards, presented by the American Booksellers Association, has announced the shortlisted titles for 2026. Independent booksellers vote for all seven genres: Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Debut Adult, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Children’s Picture Books, and Debut Children’s. A few of the shortlisted books include One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad for Adult Nonfiction, We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat for Debut Adult (spotlighted in the New Nonfiction feature of the September/October 2025 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine), and Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson for Middle Grade. The winners, who will be announced on April 8, will receive $2,000 each.
Aspen Words has announced the five finalists for the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize: Rabih Alameddine for The True, True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Grove Press), Sonora Jha for Intemperance (HarperVia), Charlotte McConaghy for Wild Dark Shore (Flatiron Books), Maria Reva for Endling (Doubleday), and Jess Walter for So Far Gone (Harper). Given annually for “an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture,” the prize confers a cash award of $35,000, one of the largest for fiction writing in the United States. Past winners include Mohsin Hamed, Tayari Jones, and Tommy Orange. This year’s winner will be revealed on April 23.
The iconic penguin logo of Penguin Random House has been liberated from its orange lozenge, set free to dance, slide, and waddle its way across the press’s marketing materials and other assets, Fast Company reports. After whimsical sketches of the bird made their way from Penguin’s archives into the brand’s 90th anniversary publicity campaign, the press was inspired to seize on readers’ affection for the penguin with a new series of illustrations. The resulting “Playful Penguins” depict the peguin at his cheekiest, and often beak-deep in a book. The original logo dates back to 1935, when press founder Allen Lane took a secretary’s advice that penguin would make “a good name to encapsulate a ‘dignified’ yet ‘flippant’ brand attitude.” Illustrator Edward Young took the logo assignment to the London Zoo, where the press’s logo hatched from a day of sketching, “capturing a mischievous energy that suggests a creature constantly in motion.”
In a keynote address to attendees of the London Book Fair, Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior argued that concerns about AI have led publishers to neglect a more urgent threat: the declining number of book readers. “AI changes how we work,” said Prior. “But the reading crisis changes whether we have a business at all.” Prior made the case that the shift in reader engagement “is neurological as much as cultural,” Publishers Weekly reports, describing “a generation rewired for the scroll over the page.” Prior called for literary advocacy “as relentless as the algorithms we are competing with,” and for following readers’ interests to make “the book as accessible, as urgent, and as socially relevant as the notification.”
The London Book Fair kicked off today at Olympia London, and Publishing Perspectives has compiled list of highlights drawn from the conference general program. The global publishing event brings together over thousands of publishers, literary agents, authors, and industry professionals whose primary focus is the sale and negotiation of international rights, distribution, and licensing of content across print, audio, and digital media. Erin Somers of Publishers Lunch reported on the first day of programming, which included an opening keynote from Pengruin Random House UK CEO Tom Weldon, who predicted that the war in the Middle East will lead to supply chain issues in the UK and the United States. “From an economic point of view, with the cost of oil going up dramatically that is going to put a lot of pressure on freight costs,” he said.
Book Riot unpacks the State Department’s recent decision to halt passport services at certain public libraries due to their status as a nonprofit/non-governmental organization. “In rural areas, these libraries may have acted as the primary passport agency for many people who would have otherwise had to drive long distances and take time off work to apply for a passport.”
Published in response to an AI industry “built on stolen work…taken without permission or payment,” approximately ten thousand authors, including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, have contributed to an “empty” book that will be distributed to attendees of the London Book Fair, the Guardian reports. The only contents in Don’t Steal This Book is a list of the author’s names. Next week the UK government “is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.”
Last week Amy Griffin, best-selling memoirist of The Tell (The Dial Press), was sued by a former classmate who accused the author of using her story of sexual abuse for her book, reports the New York Times. The lawsuit was filed in California almost one year following the publication of the book, stating, “‘The Tell’ constitutes neither a genuine nor harmless memoir.” Selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club last year, the memoir mentions detailed memories from childhood that Griffin claims to have recovered while under the influence of MDMA therapy.
Physical books and other print media are thriving in France, reports the Guardian. During a time of screen fatigue, “social media-addled attention spans,” the rise of generative AI, and general fear of a post-literate society, the French magazine-book scene includes 3,000 independent bookstores (a higher number than all of those in the United States, though France has one-fifth of the population) and 770 new kiosks. Paris-based journalist Lindsey Tramuta says, “Print is showing some strong signs of survival,” adding that the magazine is “an object of fascination—a collectible that carries a point of view….”
Former Amazon executive Greg Greeley has been named the new CEO of Simon & Schuster, effective immediately, reports Publishers Lunch. At age sixty-two, Greeley is one of the first Big Five CEOs from outside the literary industry. Richard Sarnoff, a company board chair, commented: “Greg Greeley is a talented and strategic leader with wide-ranging experience managing enterprises across physical and digital markets. His depth of expertise and avid love of books give us the confidence that he is the right CEO to take Simon & Schuster forward as it begins its next 100 years….” He is following Jonathan Karp, who served as CEO of Simon & Schuster for five years and will remain with the company as publisher of the new Simon Six imprint.
António Lobo Antunes, a giant of Portuguese literature and the author of more than thirty novels and other books, has died at the age of eighty-three, the New York Times reports. The author “charted Portugal’s halting emergence from the crippling dictatorship of Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar from 1932 to 1968, and its failed colonial wars in Africa. His career was studded with literary awards, including the Jerusalem Prize in 2005 and the Camões Prize, Portugal’s highest literary honor, in 2007.”
Publishers Lunch reports that thirteen publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster, together with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), have brought a lawsuit against Anna’s Archive, a website used by tech companies to source pirated books for training AI models. The suit alleges that the copyrights of more than 140 million texts have been violated by Anna’s Archive. “Anna’s Archive is a brazen pirate operation that steals and distributes millions of literary works while outrageously offering access to AI developers in exchange for crypto payments,” said Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of AAP, in a statement to the press. “To fight back, we must use all available tools and believe this action in U.S. court will make a difference. The unfortunate reality is that creators face a level of digital piracy today that is so staggering it is almost unbelievable—it is an affront to the public interest.”
Former Penguin Random House executive Brendan Cahill has announced the launch of new publisher Navigator Books, Publishers Weekly reports. The press will be based in Philadelphia and focus on history, memoir, biography, and historical fiction, publishing its first of three 2026 titles in July. The press plans to release six titles per year starting in 2027. “There are many talented established and emergent authors who are frustrated by today’s publishing landscape,” Cahill said in a statement. “Navigator Books is excited to join the new generation of innovative and dynamic author-centric independent book publishers seeking to transform the industry by addressing its legacy limitations.”
Ina Steiner reports on the end of Amazon’s book club program for EcommerceBytes. Last Friday, the technology company notified customers that it was winding down Amazon Book Clubs as of March 1 to “focus on other book discovery features for readers.” Steiner notes that “the Book Club feature had allowed members to use a widget to suggest books to fellow members and to endorse suggestions made by other members.” Amazon’s offered alternative to customers was exploring Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in 2013.
The Gernert Company has joined forces with Bookcase Literary Agency to offer representation to authors of women’s commercial fiction, reports Publishers Weekly. Bookcase, a Los Angeles-based agency that represents romance authors such as Meghan Quinn and Anna Todd, is playing a central role in this partnership. Founder of the Gernert Company, David Gernert, states: “Today’s romance authors are entrepreneurial, global, and deeply and often directly connected to their readers. By partnering with Bookcase, we’re combining institutional reach with category-specific insight in a way that meaningfully serves this new generation of writers.”
Wikipedia is now restricting certain contributors who were paid to implement AI in translating existing Wikipedia articles into other languages, as the editors discovered that these translations include “hallucinations,” reports 404 Media. These AI-generated errors have also led to new policies for the online encyclopedia, including the use of an independent AI model to peer review the current AI translations.
For the New York Times Style Magazine, Elly Fishman considers the endeavor of visual artist Bethany Collins who for four months “woke up every day before dawn, brewed coffee, and sat down at her dining table to copy out Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick(1851) with a nib pen.” Collins was inspired by an earlier work by conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg, who in 1974 gave a similar treatment to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Immersing herself in Melville’s text, she found Moby-Dick to be rife with two-hundred-year-old anxieties that still echo today: The book warns ‘against following the lone madman who will take the whole ship down,’ she says, noting that Melville also points out the dangers of ‘overconsumption, the pursuit of oil, and an obsession with whiteness.’ As Americans, ‘all of those obsessions and pursuits are somehow uniquely ours,’ she says.”
Sixteen novels have been announced as the longlist for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, “with settings ranging from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata” and including nine titles from independent presses and seven debuts, the Guardian reports. The annual award confers a prize of £30,000 (approximately $40,100) to a work of fiction written in the English language by a woman. The titles comprising this year’s longlist are Gloria Don’t Speak (Weatherglass Books) by Lucy Apps, Paradiso 17 (4th Estate) by Hannah Lillith Assadi, Moderation (Atlantic Books) by Elaine Castillo, Flashlight (Jonathan Cape) by Susan Choi, Dominion (Europa Editions) by Addie E Citchens (Europa Editions), The Benefactors (Sceptre) by Wendy Erskine, The Correspondent (Michael Joseph) by Virginia Evans, The Mercy Step (Cassava Republic Press) by Marcia Hutchinson, The Others (Fly on the Wall Press) by Sheena Kalayil, Kingfisher (Saraband) by Rozie Kelly, Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate), Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press), A Guardian and a Thief (Scribner) by Megha Majumdar, Wild Dark Shore (Canongate) by Charlotte McConaghy, The Best of Everything (Tinder Press) by Kit de Waal, and A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing (Dead Ink) by Alice Evelyn Yang.
Writers are gathering in Baltimore as the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) kicks off the 2026 AWP Conference & Bookfair at the Baltimore Convention Center. BmoreArt expects that more than 10,000 writers, editors, and other literati will participate in the annual festivities, which include panels, readings, an exhibition hall with booths from presses and writing programs, offsite events, and a keynote address by screenwriter and director John Waters. The conference runs through today through March 7; visit Poets & Writers at booth #347 to meet staff, enjoy free copies of Poets & Writers Magazine, and more.
The Authors Guild has launched its Human Authored certification program, Publishers Lunch reports. For $10 per book (free to Authors Guild members), authors “can register to use the Human Authored certification mark to distinguish their human-written books from AI-generated books.” According to the program’s usage guidelines, “The certification mark may only be used in connection with literary works for which the text itself was fully authored by one or more human beings and not generated by AI, except for a de minimis amount (such as through the use of AI-powered spelling and grammar check applications). Use of generative AI to create a table of contents, indices, or other auxiliary parts of a book, or for researching, brainstorming, outlining, or any purposes other than generating text does not disqualify a work from being Human Authored.”
Steph Opitz has been named director of publishing services at Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, Publishers Weekly reports. Opitz, who has worked for Bookshop.org since 2022, most recently as director of bookstore partnerships, will succeed longtime Consortium president Julie Schaper, who in September announced her plans to retire.
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation has revealed the five finalists for the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Judges Samantha Hunt, Tania James, and De’Shawn Charles Winslow considered 387 eligible novels and short story collections by American authors published in the U.S. in 2025 and selected the following finalists: Dominion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Addie E. Citchens, The White Hot (One World) by Quiara Alegría Hudes, The Sisters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Heart the Lover (Grove Press) by Lily King, and Small Scale Sinners (A Public Space Books) by Mahreen Sohail. The winner, to be announced in early April, will receive $15,000; the remaining four finalists will each receive an honorarium of $5,000.
Media Do International, a Japanese e-book distribution company, will acquire Seven Seas Entertainment, “the largest independently owned manga publisher in the English-language market.” Seven Seas will continue to operate under its existing leadership team with the same editorial direction, and all its imprints will continue to be distributed by Penguin Random House. The publisher notes that, “The acquisition reflects continued global momentum in manga, light novels, and international storytelling across print, digital, and audio formats, and positions [us] for long-term growth within an expanding worldwide readership.”
The digital catalog service Edelweiss has announced a discount tier for publishers, allowing presses to make their titles searchable within the platform, visible in saved filter results, and eligible for inclusion in curated collections for bookstores, libraries, and media sources, reports Publishers Weekly. The company’s CEO, John Rubin, said, “This new offering is designed to provide a clear, affordable option for title visibility, while still preserving the functionality and value that our full-service publisher partners rely on.” This announcement comes on the heels of criticism from the literary community when Edelweiss raised prices and fees following its acquisition by Valsoft in December 2024. Details on the rollout will be announced in the coming months, and the launch of this new offering is expected later this year.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters recently announced their eleven new members for 2026, including, in literature: Sandra Cisneros, Marie Howe, Pico Iyer, Rick Moody, Carl Phillips, and U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze. The academy’s website states, “The three hundred members of Arts and Letters are divided into departments of architecture, art, literature, and music, and are elected in recognition of notable achievement in their fields. Members are elected for life, pay no dues, and nominate and elect new members as vacancies occur.” The new members, alongside three honorary members, will be inducted during the annual Arts and Letters ceremony in May, with Zadie Smith delivering the keynote address.
The American Library Association has taken to social media to “strongly denounce” House Resolution 7661 (H.R. 7661), new legislation initiated on Tuesday aimed at censoring trans narratives and “sexually-oriented material” in public school libraries. Earlier this week, Kelly Jensen wrote about the resolution for Book Riot. “Such a broad definition also ensures that this kind of bill could be applicable in any situation where it would benefit the banners,” argued Jensen. “It isn’t a stretch to see a bill like this used to outright ban all books by or about LGBTQ+ people under the guise of it being ‘sexually oriented.’”
In an opinion piece for Publishers Weekly, Jason Low, publisher and co-owner of the multicultural book publisher Lee & Low books, describes how recent book bans have upended Lee & Low’s Diversity Baseline Survey. Low says the survey, which had become “the industry standard for inclusive hiring practices and accountability” since its initiation in 2017 and which is typically conducted every four years, “will be postponed until further notice” because of “more pressing matters.” Low thanked publishers for the attention given to past surveys before considering the state of inclusivity and diversity in publishing: “As far as books for children go, the diversity movement is by and large in limbo. In the face of extreme censorship that targets diverse authors and titles, our first priority as publishers must shift toward continuing to publish and sell diverse books for children in contentious times. The second priority is to redirect the time and effort we would have spent on DBS 4.0 and channel it toward the fight to ban book bans.”
Tom Hanks is set to star in the film adaptation of George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Kirkus Reviews reports. The acclaimed novel, for which Saunders received the Booker Prize, imagines a grieving Abraham Lincoln amid a polyvocal chorus of ghosts as Lincoln’s recently deceased son lingers between death and rebirth. The film adaptation will combine live action and stop-motion animation, and will mark the prolific actor’s first time portraying an American president. (Saunders spoke about conceiving of the novel as such and cultivating “narrative alertness” in a feature by Kevin Larimer in the March/April 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.)
Ann Godoff, the founder, president, and editor-in-chief of Penguin Press, passed away on Tuesday evening due to bone cancer complications, reports Publishers Lunch. Starting off in the industry as an assistant to Simon & Schuster editor Alice Mayhew, Godoff became a senior editor at Atlantic Monthly Press in 1987, moving to Random House in 1991, where she continued to grow professionally. Penguin Press publisher Scott Moyers writes, “Ann’s impact on American book culture over the past four decades is incalculable. … Beyond the industry accolades, her legacy should be measured in her success in helping authors create indelible new spaces in the minds of readers.”
Tyrant Books, an independent publisher based in Rome, Italy, and New York City, will resume publishing, reports Publishers Weekly, after being largely dormant following the sudden death of its founder Giancarlo DiTrapano in 2021. Luke Goebel, who previously worked as an unpaid assistant at Tyrant Books, will now oversee its editorial direction and expansion, serving as one of two individuals having an acquisition of 50 percent ownership. Regarding the reason behind this acquisition, Goebel notes, “I did it for one reason: to ensure that Tyrant would never be absorbed into any corporate ecosystem whose financial roots trace back to power structures fundamentally misaligned with what this press represents.” The other owner is Matthew Johnson of Fat Possum Records, who provided early funding for the press.
Dan Barry of the New York Times reports on the online scammers that are preying on the literary world as of late. From personal experience, he writes, “It turns out that the fawning e-mails I’ve been receiving are mere specks in a virtual mudslide of fraud descending upon the publishing world.” Overseas scam artists have been using AI to impersonate literary figures such as George Saunders and Colson Whitehead, as well as literary agents, publishing houses, and, more recently, the National Book Foundation, to flatter writers while offering false editorial, publishing, or promotional services for a fee. Many literary associations are issuing warnings so writers don’t continue to fall for these messages. (Read the Poets & Writers alert about such scams that was posted last October.)
Spotify has announced the launch of Audiobook Charts, a publicly-available list of its most popular audiobook titles of the week, Book Riot reports. In addition to listing its overall most-streamed audiobooks, Audiobook Charts will offer breakdowns of popularity by genre in categories including romance, science fiction and fantasy, and memoir. At the top of the inaugurual chart for overall listens is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights as narrated by Billie Fulford-Brown.
A project by a Wesleyan University undergraduate seeks to “help underprivileged youth leaders in Mongolia improve their writing skills and amplify the voices and concerns of their community,” according to the university. A political science major seeking to support peers in her native country, Tamiraa Sanjaajav launched the Nomadvocate Youth Civic Writing Lab to give young Mongolians literacy skills that might in turn translate to political empowerment. “In the first iteration of the program in June 2025, Sanjaajav hosted thirty Mongolian students in-person in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city, for a month-long writing- and discussion-intensive initiative. The second iteration of the program occurred in winter of 2025 online, engaging over one hundred and eighty participants and twenty volunteers.” The program expands this summer to communities in rural Mongolia.
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2026 International Booker Prize, an eclectic group “featuring stories of witchcraft, warfare, trauma, transformation, and more.” The list comprises thirteen titles translated from eleven langauges, and includes three debuts. The longlisted titles are The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran (Scribe) by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin; We Are Green and Trembling (New Directions) by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers; The Remembered Soldier (New Vessel) by Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay; The Deserters (New Directions) by Mathias Énard, translated from French by Charlotte Mandell; Small Comfort (HarperCollins) by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson; She Who Remains (Sandorf Passage) by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel; The Director (Summit) by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin; On Earth As It Is Beneath (Charco) by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan; The Duke (Foundry) by Matteo Melchiorre, translated from Italian by Antonella Lettieri; The Witch (Vintage) by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump; Women Without Men (Syracuse University Press) by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from Persian by Faridoun Farrokh; The Wax Child (New Directions) by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken; and Taiwan Travelogue (Graywolf) by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King. The winner will be announced on May 19.
In an essay for the Atlantic, John Williams, the former editor of the Washington Post’s now-defunct Book World, argues that an editor should serve subscribers, not data. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, owner of the Post, recently said, “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.” In response, Williams writes: “As a reader of many distinctive publications, I want to be led by them. What makes them special is where they choose to take me, and how much I trust them to do that. In a subscription business, you are not just trying to reach new people, crucial as that is; you are also trying to retain those you already have. Sizable, steadfast subscriber bases are hard-won, and keeping them involves the fulfillment of an unspoken contract as well as the actual one that paying readers sign. I expect publications I support to attempt growth without radically changing the focus or quality of the work or pivoting to some get-traffic-quick scheme every time readership dips over a holiday weekend.”
A new study by the National Literacy Trust shows that only 10 percent of boys age 14 to 16 read daily for pleasure in the UK, according to a report by the Guardian. “While reading declines for both boys and girls in early adolescence, there are ‘signs of recovery’ among girls in later teenage years, but boys’ engagement remains persistently low.”
Over four hundred independent bookstores in the UK will have to pay higher business rates starting in April due to adjustments in the country’s budget, reports Publishers Lunch. Added on to this, some stores’ taxes will be doubled. These financial changes are being called “a disaster” by the UK’s Bookseller Association, which is asking their government for permanent reductions in business rates for booksellers.
The New Yorker’s Casey Cep covers the unlikely success of a bookstore in Alabama with a unique business model. The Alabama Booksmith, run by ninety-year-old Jake Reiss, only sells signed, first editions of hardcover books, mostly at the publishers’ prices. Cep writes, “Because Reiss guarantees sales of several hundred copies, he can sometimes convince publicists to add a book-tour stop in Birmingham, even if it’s just for a lightning signing during which he and his team serve as a kind of human conveyor belt, shuffling signature-ready books by so speedily that the author can make it to a nearby city for another event that same night. When that strategy doesn’t work, he’s not above begging authors directly.”
Ingram Content Group has announced a new digital catalog and galley platform to aid publishers in sharing titles with booksellers, media, and librarians, reports Publishers Weekly. Covered, the new online service from the company, will have a beta launch this fall for a select group of industry professionals with broader industry availability to come in 2027. This platform is meant to serve as a more cost-effective competitor to Edelweiss and NetGalley, the former of which hiked up its prices in 2024, making waves in the literary community.