On Tuesday, the administrators of the Man Asian Literary Prize released their longlist of twenty-one semifinalists for the 2008 award, given for a novel by an Asian author that has not yet been published in English.

The Los Angeles Times is laying off two of its book editors and ending its standalone Sunday book review section on July 27, Publishers Weekly reported yesterday. Although Nancy Sullivan, executive director of corporate communications at the newspaper would not comment on the future of its book coverage, four former editors of the section wrote a joint letter complaining about the cuts.

The staff of Cadillac Cicatrix, a two-year-old literary magazine based in Carmel Valley, California, recently was forced to evacuate the magazine's office in the face of encroaching wildfires.

Kay Ryan has been named the sixteenth poet laureate of the United States, the Library of Congress announced today.

Mexican actor and producer Rodolfo de Anda recently announced that he has purchased the film rights to a forgotten screenplay written nearly a half century ago by Gabriel García Márquez.

During a series of question and answers following his speech in Fairfax, Virginia, last Thursday, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama made some comments about writing and reading.

Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children (Jonathan Cape) was recently announced winner of the Best of the Booker award, a celebratory honor given to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Man Booker Prize.

Jhumpa Lahiri was recently named winner of the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, more than two months in advance of the scheduled winner announcement.

Three international PEN centers have found that over the past year, as buildup to the Beijing Olympic Games has reached a crescendo, freedom of expression in China continues to be squelched by the Chinese government.