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According to a new poll, 40 percent of British adults have not read or listened to a book in the past year, the Guardian reports. The data also showed reading habits split along gender, class, and political divides. Women read more than men, with 66 percent of women reporting they read at least one book in the past year compared with 53 percent of men. Sixty-six percent of middle-class respondents have read a book in the last year compared to 52 percent of working-class respondents. Compared to other political affiliations, Labour Party voters were most likely to have read a book in the past year. The median British adult has read or listened to three books in the past twelve months.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for enforcing Trump’s anti-trans mandate, Hyperallergic reports. The lawsuit argues that the NEA’s new grant requirement violates the First Amendment and administrative procedure law. The suit represents four arts organizations—Rhode Island Latino Arts, the Theatre Communications Group and National Queer Theater in New York, and the Theater Offensive in Massachusetts.

The March 2025 issue of Poetry, curated by guest editor Esther Belin, features work by Indigenous writers and is the first-ever issue of the magazine devoted to Diné language and poetics. Belin writes in her Editor’s Note: “Originally forced on us, English is now being reconstructed with Diné sound and thought.” Contributors include Sherwin Bitsui, Kinsale Drake, Elise Paschen, and Jake Skeets, among others.

The book publishing industry is preparing for the impact of President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and 10 percent increase to tariffs on goods from China, Publishers Weekly reports. While there is far less printing in Mexico and Canada than in China, the U.S. imported $1.82 billion of uncoated paper in 2023, with 67 percent of that paper coming from Canada. Printers and publishers in the U.S. disagree on whether domestic book manufacturers have the capacity to assume the production of books that are currently printed in China.

The longlist for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced, the Guardian reports. The list includes novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Miranda July, Elizabeth Strout, and Aria Aber, among others. A shortlist of six books will be announced on April 2. The winner will be revealed on June 12 and receive 30,000 pounds (approximately $38,610).

The finalists for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction have been announced, the Associated Press reports. The nominees include ’Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots (Norton), Susan Muaddi Darraj’s Behind You Is the Sea (HarperVia), Percival Everett’s James (Doubleday), Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Danzy Senna’s Colored Television (Riverhead Books). The winner will be announced in early April and receive $15,000.

This spring Keisha Mennefee is launching Honey Blossom Press, a boutique imprint focused on underrepresented authors, Publishers Weekly reports. The imprint plans to publish twenty titles in its first year and will be distributed by Ingram, with audiobooks produced and distributed by RBmedia.

Deep Vellum Publishing will assume publishing, distribution, and marketing responsibilities for Open Letter Books, a nonprofit literary translation press founded in 2007 and housed at the University of Rochester, Publishers Weekly reports. Editorial direction will remain with Chad W. Post, the founder of Open Letters Books. With this latest partnership, Deep Vellum now encompasses six imprints: Dalkey Archive Press, Fum d’Estampa, Open Letter, Phoneme Media, La Reunion, and A Strange Object.

French president Emmanuel Macron has said he is concerned about the “arbitrary detention” of Boualem Sansal, the French Algerian author who recently began a hunger strike over his imprisonment in Algeria, the Guardian reports. In November 2024 Sansal was arrested, prompting a letter calling for his release, which was signed by renowned authors such as Salman Rushdie, Annie Ernaux, and Wole Soyinka. PEN America released a statement on Tuesday calling for the immediate release of the author, adding that, “his hunger strike adds to grave concerns for his wellbeing.”

A new report from PEN America provides a thorough analysis of the 4,128 unique titles that the organization found were removed from public schools during the 2023–2024 school year, Publishers Weekly reports. The study determined that 36 percent of the banned books feature characters or people of color and 25 percent include LGBTQ+ people or characters.

At its Winter Institute in Denver, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) created space to discuss the future of independent bookselling amidst the Trump administration’s attacks on DEI and dismissal of book bans as a “hoax,” Publishers Weekly reports. Allison Hill, the CEO of ABA, emphasized the organization’s support for DEI initiatives and the freedom to read: “Great books are written by everyone, and they should be available to everyone,” she said.

An interdisciplinary exhibition examining the history, craft, and impact of children’s literature is open until August 17 at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, Fine Books & Collections reports. The show features work created by Gabriel García Márquez, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Jayne Anne Phillips, among others, in their youth. Other highlights include magic lantern slides illustrating Aesop’s Fables and illustrations from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince.

Shannon Ives writes for Electric Literature about eight contemporary queer retellings of classic myths and fairy tales. The list includes The Song of Achilles (Ecco, 2012), which is based on The Iliad and written by Madeline Miller; A Sweet Sting of Salt (Dell, 2024) by Rose Sutherland, which offers a “sapphic retelling of selkie folklore”; and Malice (Del Rey, 2022) by Heather Walter, which reimagines Maleficent as Aurora’s love interest.

Iowa House Representative Helena Hayes, whose bill to criminalize librarians has advanced quickly through the legislature and inspired a copycat bill in the Senate, has brought another bill to the House this week that would cut off certain state funds to libraries if they pay dues to the American Library Association (ALA) or the Iowa Library Association, Book Riot reports. Hayes is proposing the bill because she claims the ALA, which condemns censorship, opposes content ratings placed on books in libraries.

All thirteen writers longlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize are first-time nominees, the Guardian reports. The prize for the best book translated into English is 50,000 pounds (approximately $63,320) and will be shared equally between the winning author and translator. The shortlist of six titles will be announced on April 8, and the winner will be celebrated at a ceremony in London on May 20.

Hoopla, a service that provides public libraries e-books, announced it will do more to inhibit the dissemination of low-quality, AI-generated books, which were common on its platform, 404 Media reports. Jennie Rose Halperin, the executive director of Library Futures, an organization for librarians, remains disappointed in hoopla for evading accountability: “Librarians select, purchase, and lend materials in service to the public, and they put their trust in hoopla to provide a curated and high-quality catalog of materials,” she says. “Hoopla has broken this trust in favor of a profit-motivated, exploitative model that flies in the face of professional values.”

Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed Salman Rushdie, has been found guilty of attempted murder, and faces up to thirty-two years in prison, the New York Times reports.

Sophia Stewart writes for Publishers Weekly about Stephanie Anderson’s book Women in Independent Publishing: A History of Unsung Innovators, 1953–1989 (University of New Mexico Press, 2024). The book features interviews with twenty-five visionary women and nonbinary editors and publishers who helped shape the small press landscape from the 1950s to the 1980s. As to why women continue to dominate the independent publishing landscape, Carey Salerno, the publisher of the poetry press Alice James Books, says, “I think women—and other individuals who have been historically marginalized—are drawn to independent publishing because it’s a more caring and democratic landscape.” Michelle Dotter, publisher and editor in chief of Dzanc Books, offers another theory: “Is it too cynical to say, because there’s less money and power involved? Sincerely, I think it’s partly that, and partly that the Big Five hasn’t always made space for women in the top ranks.”

For Book Riot, Kathleen Schmidt, the founder and CEO of KMS Public Relations, discusses how tariffs will impact book costs for readers. The tariff on Chinese imports will likely increase the price of books that are more expensive to print. Schmidt explains that those books include board books for children, illustrated books, four color cookbooks, and special edition hardcovers. If readers “notice that the price of books is increasing, it’s not to punish the consumer,” Schmidt adds. “It’s to keep the publishing ecosystem flowing” and to fairly compensate the people working on those books.

The American Booksellers Association will celebrate its 125th anniversary as an organization supporting and advocating for independent booksellers at this year’s Winter Institute, which runs from February 23 to February 26 in Denver, Colorado, Publishers Weekly reports. The conference will include talks, presentations, and networking with editors, publishers, booksellers, and more than a hundred authors.

The social media readers’ platform StoryGraph, which uses AI to offer readers tracking tools and recommend their next books, has now reached 3.8 million users, the Guardian reports. StoryGraph founder, software engineer and developer Nadia Odunayo, says, “I think the number one thing, if people are comparing us with Goodreads, is that a lot of people do go: ‘It’s just not owned by Amazon.’”

Oprah Winfrey’s latest book club pick is Dream State (Doubleday, 2025) by Eric Puchner, the Associated Press reports. Set mostly in Montana and California, the novel is about a love triangle among two college friends and the woman they both wanted to marry. In a statement, Winfrey said, “This is the kind of book you won’t want to put down written by a brilliant storyteller.”

Hundreds of poets, playwrights, dancers, visual artists, and others have signed a letter calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to reverse the current administration’s grant requirements that forbid the promotion of diversity or “gender ideology,” the New York Times reports. The letter states: “Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism,” and adds that “the arts are for and represent everybody.”

Fatima Jalloh offers advice on how to host poetry workshops for the Creative Independent. They advise facilitators to understand the different types of workshops (academic, community, generative, craft, etc.), create a safe, welcoming environment, manage time, filter feedback, and adapt to the needs of the participants.

Six publishers have come together to form the Stable Book Group, Publishers Weekly reports. Chris Gruener and Keith Riegert launched the collective, which merges four existing publishers—She Writes Press, Trafalgar Square Books, Ulysses Press, and VeloPress—with the recently founded Galpón Press joining as a client, and Mountain Gazette Books joining as a partner. Staff will work across all the companies allowing the publishers to share resources as well as editorial, production, and accounting operations.

Hachette Book Group grew sales by 7 percent in 2024, with Grand Central, Orbit, and Little, Brown Books for Young readers delivering “particularly exceptional results,” according to CEO David Shelley, Shelf Awareness reports.

San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB) has announced its second national mentorship award in book arts for this summer, Fine Books & Collections reports. The upcoming mentors will be Julie Chen and Zach Clark, and applications are open until March 2. SFCB will offer two mentees a $3,000 stipend to cover program expenses, travel, accommodation, materials, and other costs. The award “provides mid-career and established artists from underrepresented communities with the opportunity to learn from professionals in the bookbinding, letterpress, and artists book fields.”

HarperCollins has announced an upcoming edition of “Hansel and Gretel” that will combine Stephen King’s words and the late Maurice Sendak’s illustrations, the Associated Press reports. Sendak created sketches for set and costume designs for the Humperdinck opera adaptation of “Hansel and Gretel” in 1997. The new edition, which is set to be published in September, will pair those drawings with King’s retelling of the renowned tale.

Faber, a renowned independent publisher in the U.K., has launched Faber U.S., a new division in the United States, Publishers Weekly reports. Faber’s international sales director, Mallory Ladd, will be the director of the division, which plans to publish forty books this year. Publishers Group West will oversee distribution.

Arts organizations are reacting to the announcement from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) that it will prioritize programs that celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States and defund a program that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and underserved communities, NPR reports. The funding that has been cut primarily served small organizations that have “limited access to the arts relative to geography, ethnicity, economics, and/or disability.” The NEA also stated that applicants must adhere to “all applicable executive orders” from the White House.

Salman Rushdie, who wrote the memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (Random House, 2024), will face his attacker in court, NPR reports. The trial of his assailant, Hadi Matar, who has plead not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault, began on Monday.

Yale Library has awarded two prizes for the highest achievement in American poetry. Arthur Sze has been announced the winner of the 54th Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, which includes a cash prize of $175,000. Sze is the author of twelve books of poetry, a chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Major Jackson is the first recipient of the recently created Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry, which includes a cash prize of $25,000. The book prize recognizes Jackson’s collection Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002-2022 (Norton, 2023).

Adam Gopnik writes for the New Yorker about the story behind Lillian Ross’s famous profile of Hemingway, which the public perceived as ridiculing the renowned novelist. Letters between the friends reveal Hemingway as “admirably stoic and steadfast” about the piece, according to Gopnik. In one letter to Ross, Hemingway writes: “I always explain to people that we are good friends and that you had no malice toward me and they act as though I were getting soft in the brain and could not tell when I had been devastated and irreparably harmed.”

The Emerson Collective, the LLC founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, is helping indie bookstores develop community outreach as well as “not-for-profit and hybrid business models that could help them ‘supercharge’ their programming,” Publishers Weekly reports. Will Ames, the portfolio director for philanthropy at the Emerson Collective, called booksellers “curators” who excel at executing “mission-related work” like readings, educational projects, and literacy programs, adding, “I want every small town that needs a bookstore to have one that is really thriving.”