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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.
The Prison and Justice Writing Program at PEN America has launched the Incarcerated Writers Bureau, a digital resource to help make professional and creative opportunities more accessible to writers in U.S. prisons. “The website features information for publishers, literary agents, and journalists seeking to work with incarcerated writers, a searchable roster of featured writers, and a database for publishers and media platforms to submit opportunities for writers working from prison.”
Pepe Montero has been named the new executive director of literary arts center Hugo House, Capitol Hill Seattle reports. The announcement comes nearly two years after Diane Delgado resigned from the position after less than a year on the job. Delgado was Hugo House’s first permanent executive director since Tree Swenson resigned in February 2021.
Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, has hired a new CEO, according to Portland Business Journal. David Maquera takes over from Patrick Bassett who stepped down in September after five years in the position. “The leadership change comes two months after Powell’s laid off employees and secured a $4.5M capital infusion.”
More travelers are drawing inspiration for their trips from their favorite stories and books, USA Today reports. According to the global travel search engine Skyscanner, “55 percent of travelers have booked their trips based on literature, with 14 percent of them wanting to go on a writing or reading retreat and 33 percent hoping to visit a destination mentioned in a book.”
In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Carlo Rotella, who teaches English courses at Boston College, writes about how some humanities teachers have approached their work using “more purposeful approaches to writing and reading, less reliance on technology and a renewed focus on face-to-face community.” According to Rotella, an English class that resists AI has three main elements: “pen-and-paper and oral testing; teaching the process of writing rather than just assigning papers; and greater emphasis on what happens in the classroom.”
James Patterson and Bookshop.org have partnered to launch a new literary award called the James Patterson and Bookshop.org Prize, Shelf Awareness reports. A grand prize of $15,000 will go to a debut author chosen by independent booksellers; a runner-up will receive $10,000. Full-length debut books originally written in English and first published in the U.S. between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, are eligible for the prize. “Indie booksellers from qualifying bookstores will be able to nominate titles and vote for the longlist, shortlist, and final winners. Nominations will open on January 5, 2026, with the 10-book longlist scheduled to be announced on February 9. The five-book shortlist will be announced on March 16, and the winner on April 6.”
Kelly Jensen of Book Riot examines U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell’s ruling in favor of twenty-one state attorneys general who sued Donald Trump over the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and several other small federal agencies. “This permanent injunction means that the Trump administration cannot do further harm to the IMLS.”
The latest episode of the New York Times Book Review podcast, hosted by MJ Franklin, looks at the year’s big book awards and what they “might tell us about the state of literature in 2025.”
A new partnership between the Black List and Blackstone Publishing called the Blackstone Publishing Novel Initiative aims to identify an unpublished manuscript to enter into a $25,000 publishing deal. “The Black List will assist Blackstone Publishing in identifying a shortlist of outstanding manuscripts through a submission period on blcklst.com from November 20, 2025 until June 9, 2026.” In order to be eligible, however, writers are requited to pay at least $180 in fees.
Chris Hewitt of the Minnesota Star Tribune writes about the practice and process of asking fellow authors for prepublication praise, or blurbs. “The idea behind blurbs is that if a beloved writer likes a book (assuming they have read it), maybe you will, too. But that’s not a universal belief.”
Catapult Books has acquired Portland, Oregon–based Hawthorne Books, Publishers Weekly reports. “Under the agreement, Catapult has acquired Hawthorne’s catalog of about 50 titles and the Hawthorne trademark.” Founded in 2001 by Rhonda Hughes, Hawthorne becomes Catapult’s fourth imprint alongside Counterpoint Press and Soft Skull Press. “Hughes will stay on as contributing editor for Hawthorne Books and report to group editorial director Dan Smetanka. The first new titles acquired by Hughes are expected to be released in fall 2026.”
A Missouri state law that “criminalized public and private school teachers and librarians for providing students books with what the state considered ‘sexually explicit material,’” has been overturned by a Missouri Circuit Court, Katy Hershberger of Publishers Lunch reports. Under the law, which was enacted in 2022, hundreds of books were removed from school libraries. “School staff members who were in violation could be fined $2,000 or jailed for up to a year.”
“More than half of published novelists in the UK believe artificial intelligence could eventually replace their work entirely, according to a new report from the University of Cambridge,” the Guardian reports. The study, conducted for the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, surveyed 258 published novelists and 74 publishing professionals. “Just over half (51 percent) of novelists said that AI is likely to end up entirely replacing their work.”
Elizabeth A. Harris of the New York Times takes a look at the award-winning books from last night’s National Book Award ceremony.
The 76th National Book Awards winners were announced this evening at the 2025 ceremony. David Bowles presented the award in Young People’s Literature to Daniel Nayeri, author of The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story; Stesha Brandon presented the award in Translated Literature to Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and translator Robin Myers for We Are Green and Trembling; Terrance Hayes presented the award in Poetry to Patricia Smith, author of The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems; Raj Patel presented the award in Nonfiction to Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This; and Rumaan Alam presented the award in Fiction to Rabih Alameddine, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother). Roxane Gay and George Saunders received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, respectively.
Two books that had been submitted to one of New Zealand’s largest literary competitions were disqualified “because the covers had violated the contest’s new rule about A.I.-generated material,” according to the New York Times. The publisher of both books, Quentin Wilson, “said in an e-mail on Tuesday that the episode was ‘heartbreaking’ for the two authors, who do not use A.I. in their writing, and upsetting for the production and design teams that worked hard on the books. He added that the rapid rise of A.I. has put the publishing industry in ‘uncharted waters.’”
Copies of Sarah Ferguson’s forthcoming children’s book, set to be published on Thursday, have been withdrawn from sale and pulped “in the wake of the renewed scrutiny over her links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,” the Guardian reports. Flora and Fern: Kindness Along the Way has also disappeared from the publisher’s website as well as those of online retailers. Earlier this month Ferguson lost the title Sarah, Duchess of York after King Charles stripped Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles.
The American Library Association has announced the six books shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The novels are A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf) by Megha Majumdar; The Unworthy (Scribner) by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses; and We Do Not Part (Hogarth) by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The nonfiction books are Baldwin, Styron, and Me (Biblioasis) by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc; There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Crown) by Brian Goldstone; and Things in Nature Merely Grow (FSG) by Yiyun Li. The two medal winners will be announced on Tuesday, January 27.
Spotify has launched audiobook programs in its home country of Sweden as well as Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, Publishers Weekly reports. “The catalog has 300,000 titles, including over 60,000 local-language titles: more than 29,000 in Danish, over 25,000 in Swedish, and over 19,000 in Finnish.”
Souvankham Thammavongsa is the winner of the 2025 Giller Prize for her novel, Pick a Color, published by Knopf in Canada and Little, Brown in the United States. She received $100,000 Canadian (approximately $71,375). The finalists, each of whom will receive $10,000 Canadian, are Mona Awad for We Love You, Bunny, Eddy Boudel Tan for The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, Emma Donoghue for The Paris Express, and Emma Knight for The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus.
Publishers Weekly looks at various organizations working to ensure that people who are incarcerated have access to literature, including Chicago’s Books to Prisoners and Seattle’s Books Not Bars. “In 2024, some 27,500 pounds of books went out to prisons in more than 40 states, with the help of local groups that know the rules of individual states and institutions.”
Sourcebooks is now the fifth largest publisher in the country when considering print units sold, “breaking the longstanding Big Five, and pushing Macmillan into sixth place, according to publishers’ internal analysis of data from Circana Bookscan,” according to Katy Hershberger of Publishers Lunch. “While Macmillan is still considerably larger overall, with far higher e-book unit sales and an established, successful audiobook division, this is the first time an independently-run house has challenged the dominance of the same set of big publishing conglomerates since Bookscan began.”
Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute, announced the 2026 longlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, a $35,000 award for a work of fiction that “illuminates a vital contemporary issue.” The longlist is True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Grove Press) by Rabih Alameddine, King of Ashes (Flatiron Books) by S.A. Cosby, The Wilderness (Mariner Books) by Angela Flournoy, Culpability (Spiegel & Grau) by Bruce Holsinger, Intemperance (HarperVia) by Sonora Jha, The River Is Waiting (Marysue Rucci Books) by Wally Lamb, Ring (Bancroft Press) by Michelle Lerner, A Family Matter (Scribner) by Claire Lynch, Wild Dark Shore (Flatiron Books) by Charlotte McConaghy, These Heathens (Random House) by Mia McKenzie, Happy Land (Berkley) by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, This Here Is Love (Norton) by Princess Joy L. Perry, Endling (Doubleday) by Maria Reva, Behind the Waterline (Blair) by Kionna Walker LeMalle, and So Far Gone (Harper) by Jess Walter. The shortlist will be announced March 11, 2026; the winner will be revealed April 23, 2026.
The largest independent distributor of Spanish-language books in the United States, “a primary pipeline for Spanish-language titles to schools and libraries nationwide,” will close after more than sixty years in business, Publishers Weekly reports. Lectorum Publications “cited a confluence of factors leading to its closing,” the most critical factor was “the shift in federal funding policies for schools, in particular regarding Title I funds, intended in part for purchases of books in Spanish,” Lectorum president and CEO Alex Correa says.
The judge presiding over the Anthropic lawsuit has ruled that a third-party law firm, ClaimsHero, must correct its misleading information about the Anthropic lawsuit and settlement and stop running all ads, according to Publishers Lunch. “Plaintiffs had accused ClaimsHero of soliciting authors to opt out of the settlement with website messaging and social media ads,” which the judge called “materially misleading and confusing” in a new filing.
The New York Times looks at the new documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, which chronicles the experience of spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson, who died in July, “one month shy of their 50th birthday and four years after they were diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer.” The film won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and was released Friday on Apple TV.
Algerian French writer Boualem Sansal has been released from his sentence of five years by the Algerian government, according to Publishing Perspectives. Sansal, who had been arrested following an interview in which he questioned Algeria’s historical borders, had served a year of his sentence.
Thomas Coesfeld has been named the next CEO and chair of Bertelsmann, the multinational conglomerate media company that owns Penguin Random House, the Bookseller reports. He will take over from Thomas Rabe on January 1, 2027. Christoph Mohn, chair of the Bertelsmann Supervisory Board, called Coesfeld’s appointment “a generational change in Bertelsmann’s leadership.”
Time magazine has released its “100 Must-Read Books of 2025.” Among the titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction are books by Kiran Desai (The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny), Karen Russell (The Antidote), Madeleine Thien (The Book of Records), Ocean Vuong (The Emperor of Gladness), and Kevin Wilson (Run for the Hills).
Oxford University Press is planning a round of layoffs, which, “if approved, will affect 113 employees,” according to Publishers Lunch. “A representative for the company said in a statement, ‘Like any organisation, we constantly adapt to changes within our markets. We have proposed some organisational changes which affect a small proportion of our overall workforce. We are currently undergoing a collective consultation process, and are working closely with impacted colleagues to support them during this time.’”
During the longest government shutdown in history, many independent bookstores “took on a new role as hubs for food donations,” the New York Times reports. “Dozens of bookstores have rallied around the issue of food insecurity in recent weeks, according to the American Booksellers Association.”
The New York Times follows actor Sarah Jessica Parker as she read 153 books during her time as a judge for this year’s Booker Prize. “It was the ‘experience of a lifetime,’ Parker said repeatedly during four interviews this past year tracking her time judging the award.” On November 10, David Szalay was revealed as the winner of the prestigious award for his novel Flesh.
A massive fire at a warehouse in Bhiwandi, a suburb of Mumbai, belonging to Indian comics publisher Amar Chitra Katha has destroyed more than 600,000 books, including special-edition sets, as well as “more than 200 original hand-drawn illustrations from the 1960s and 1970s,” the BBC reports. “The original positives on transparent film and other archival materials were also lost.” It took firefighters four days to contain the blaze.
Thirty-three incarcerated writers from twenty states have been named winners of PEN America’s 2025 PEN Prison Writing Awards, which honor literary works with first-place, second-place, and third-place prizes, as well as honorable mentions, in the categories of poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, and drama. “Administered by PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program, this year’s judging panel included for the first time ever six formerly incarcerated writers who were previous recipients of the awards.”
Translator Ross Benjamin writes in the Atlantic about the “Live Translation” feature of Apple’s new AirPods and the costs of instant translation made possible by AI. “The translation technology itself is astonishing, relying on large language models to all but realize the fantasy of the ‘Babel fish’ from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—instant communication with anyone, in any language, simply by placing a device in your ear,” Benjamin writes. “Yet as people embrace these transformative tools, they risk eroding capacities and experiences that embody values other than seamlessness and efficiency.”
David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh (Scribner, 2025). He receives £50,000 ($66,000). The annual prize is awarded to “the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.”
The Associated Press reports from Sunday’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize ceremony in Ohio where Salman Rushdie received a lifetime achievement award. Rushdie, whose latest book is The Eleventh Hour, his first collection of fiction since being attacked at the Chautauqua Institution three years ago, said that writers can express solidarity with those who are suffering and others on the front lines of conflict zones, such as journalists. “We can enlarge their voices by adding our voices to their voices. ... It can show us the reality of the other. It can show us what life looks like, not from our point of view, but from another point of view.”
Daniel J. Montgomery, who starts in his new role as executive director of the American Library Association, faces “a hefty slate of priorities...from federal appropriations and state funding for libraries, to partnerships with civic organizations, to generational change in the workforce, to concerns around AI and censorship,” Publishers Weekly reports. “One of my primary jobs will be to reaffirm our forward fight in support of librarians, library workers, and libraries themselves,” Montgomery is quoted as saying. “You don’t do that by signaling. You have to help libraries navigate budget fights, book bans, and attacks on public institutions.”
Rice University in Houston is launching a new MFA program in creative writing. The three-year graduate program, developed by faculty Lacy M. Johnson, Tomás Q. Morín, Kiese Laymon, Amber Dermont, Andrea Bajani, Ian Schimmel, and Justin Cronin “to nurture emerging voices in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, translation and hybrid forms while connecting students to Houston’s rich literary and cultural landscape,” will welcome its first cohort in fall 2026.
After more than two centuries of annual publication, the Farmers’ Almanac has published its final edition, USA Today reports. While the Farmers’ Almanac is not a literary publication—it is known “for its weather predictions, astronomy, and full moon and gardening calendars”—its demise is another reminder of the challenges facing periodicals. “The Almanac’s decision ‘reflects the growing financial challenges of producing and distributing the Almanac in today’s chaotic media environment,’ according to the news release.” However, it’s not all bad news: The Old Farmers’ Almanac, founded in 1792, twenty-six years before the Farmers’ Almanac, and also known for publishing weather forecasts, gardening tips, and so on, “announced that it will continue publishing on its website and a physical version of its annual publication.”
A library in South Molton, England, has collected dozens of bookmarks left inside returned books to create a Museum of Lost Bookmarks, according to the BBC. “Emma Ward, library assistant, said: ‘We think we will need a bit more room for it to grow as there are always more bookmarks coming into the library. ... We’ll do what we can to reunite them with people but if not, we will honour them by putting them on display,’ she said.” The Museum of Lost Bookmarks containts receipts, shopping lists, photos, and postcards as well as more formal bookmarks.
Katy Hershberger of Publishers Lunch reports on a third-party law firm that is soliciting authors to opt out of the class-action Anthropic settlement. “ClaimsHero, an Arizona law firm with no connection to the case, purports to handle class action lawsuit claims on behalf of class members. They launched a page specifically for the Anthropic case, which plaintiffs argue does the opposite in a ‘bait-and-switch scheme’: anyone who signs up with ClaimsHero authorizes the company to opt them–and any copyright co-owner–out of the settlement and relinquish the right to any funds.” The ClaimsHero page states that anyone who opts out of the settlement could receive more than the agreed-upon settlement of $3,000 per book, though how exactly that would be accomplished is unclear.
The Maryland Board of Education has reversed a decision by Harford County schools to ban Mike Curato’s 2020 illustrated novel Flamer from its libraries, CBS News reports. “The state Board of Education also recommended that Harford County schools revise its evaluation procedures to ensure transparency, provide opportunities for public participation and handle future reconsideration matters. The decision comes after the county school board voted to ban the book during a closed-door session in June, sparking protests from some community members.”
The New York Times takes a final look at the finalists for this year’s Booker Prize, the winner of which will be announced on Monday in London. “Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the favorite, but books by Andrew Miller, Katie Kitamura and Susan Choi are also in the running for the prestigious award.”
Publishers Weekly unpacks a new study, commissioned by the Gotham Ghostwriters and Bernoff.com, showing that “while most professional writers are embracing AI tools, authors, specifically fiction authors, are much more wary.” The study contains responses from 1,481 working writers, including 291 fiction authors; it reveals that nearly half (49 percent) of those fiction authors never use AI. “The report found that the heaviest AI users are thought leadership writers (84 percent), PR/comms professionals (73 percent), and content marketing writers (73 percent). Excluding fiction authors, the writing professionals least likely to use AI in their work are copy editors (33 percent), journalists (44 percent), and technical writers (52 percent).”
The British edition of GQ looks into the fashion industry’s supposed embrace of literature, with reading series serving as “the institutional glue” via which London’s “arty, cool, young(ish) community networks, parties, and hunts for romantic partners.” Josiah Gogarty writes: “As a lifelong book nerd, I would of course argue literature has always been cool, in a way. Certain guys and girls have always had hearts that do somersaults when they see someone cute tucking into Virginia Woolf or Martin Amis. But the boundaries of literature’s status have, in recent years, extended out of corduroy trouser land and deep into the more straightforwardly glamorous world of fashion and celebrity.”
The New York Times looks at bookstores as places of refuge and important sources of community in Russia, where censorship and restrictions on publishers and booksellers have grown more severe.
Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, an all-volunteer project to document everything on display at the Smithsonian’s twenty-one museums, the National Zoo, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, plans to make the archive’s photos and videos accessible to the media and the public, according to Library Journal. “The initiative is a response to an August letter sent by the Trump administration to the Smithsonian Institution secretary stating that exhibits were subject to review and revision in an effort to ‘reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.’”
Fantagraphics will launch an imprint dedicated to East Asian comics and graphic novels next spring, Publishers Weekly reports. “Takumigraphics will put out 16 titles per year beginning next spring, with Fantagraphics editor Conrad Groth, president Eric Reynolds, and associate publisher Gary Groth leading acquisitions.”
Yale University has no official policy on the use of artificial intelligence by students in its English deparment, so professors are taking a range of approaches to confronting it, according to a report by Yale News. “There has been ‘no call’ for a department-wide policy, Director of Undergraduate Studies Stefanie Markovits wrote in an e-mail to the News, ‘most likely because we have a general belief in academic freedom in the classroom.’ Professors are adapting in their own ways, but they agree on one thing: AI is detrimental to critical thinking and creative writing.”
Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior issued a statement apologizing to children’s book author Kate Clanchy for the publisher’s response to an online dispute back in 2021 in which Clanchy “was accused of using racist descriptions of children in her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me,” the BBC reports. Clanchy, whose book won the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2020, says she “never felt supported by them for a minute” and that “they were absolutely unsupportive” through the controversy. “I’m sorry for the hurt that was caused to Kate Clanchy and many others,” Prior said in the statement.
A new French literary award will honor a “French lesbian novel” chosen by a jury of ten artists and book industry professionals, Le Monde reports. On November 7, three days after the Prix Goncourt, or Goncourt Prize, is given by the Académie Goncourt to the author of “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year” in France, the winner of the Prix Gouincourt (“gouine is a slang term for lesbian”) will be announced by organizers Lauriane Nicol and Alex Lachkar.
The next issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is packaged in a nostalgic three-ring “Trapper Keeper–style binder,” according to SFGate. “A few of the standout pieces include an accordion-shaped treatise on flowers by Pulitzer Prize finalist Yiyun Li and a 48-page sketchbook of drawings from Sacramento cartoonist Adrian Tomine. The issue will ship out to the magazine’s nearly 6,000 subscribers, with the remaining 3,000 copies available for sale online and in bookstores for the retail price of $46 on November 20.”
According to Nigel Newton, the founder and CEO of the book publisher Bloomsbury, authors will come to rely on artificial intelligence to help them beat writer’s block, the Guardian reports. “I think AI will probably help creativity, because it will enable the 8 billion people on the planet to get started on some creative area where they might have hesitated to take the first step,” he reportedly told PA Media. Newton is also quoted as saying: “We are programmed deep in our DNA to be comforted by the authority and the reliability of big brand names, and that applies more than ever to the names of big writers.”
