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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.
A short story by Rod Serling, creator and host of the original TV show the Twilight Zone, has been published for the first time in the Strand, a magazine that releases previously unpublished work by classic authors and new fiction by contemporary best-selling writers. The story, based on Serling’s experience fighting in World War II, is called “First Squad, First Platoon,” and it “was discovered in a collection of Serling’s writings at the University of Wisconsin,” reports NPR.
On Literary Hub Brittany Allen critiques the “objectification of books,” citing as an example the rise of “super readers” who have made book consumption into a kind of sport. “What strikes me…is the profound incompatibility between the object of the book and the ethos of productivity,” Allen writes.
A spreadsheet that purports to identify authors’ political stances toward Israel has gone viral on social media. Beside each author name—including Emily St. John Mandel, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, and others—columns mark them as “Zionist” or not and provide reasoning for the designation. “Many responses accuse the spreadsheet of antisemitism, calling it a list of Jews and comparing it to Nazi lists; the majority of the authors listed are not Jewish. Others thanked the creator for doing research to guide their purchasing and reading,” writes the Forward.
The New York Times interviews Lauren Groff about her new bookstore in Florida, The Lynx.
In the Paris Review Palestinian author Adania Shibli reflects on the practice of book banning. Last year Shibli’s novel Minor Detail had received a major literary award in Germany, the ceremony for which was cancelled after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and criticism that the novel could be deemed anti-Semitic. “Writers often write fiction in order to leave behind the oppressiveness of the lived world. To force a link between fiction and the real is an act of violence against the imagination,” Shibli writes.
W. Ralph Eubanks has been named interim president of the Authors Guild, the nation’s largest professional organization that advocates on behalf of published writers. An essayist, journalist, professor, and public speaker, Eubanks succeeds Maya Shanbhag Lang, who resigned as president on Friday.
For Esquire, Jonathan Russell Clark considers “Why We Love Time Travel Stories” and reads into Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel, The Ministry of Time, and Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life,” among other titles, looking for answers.
Publishers Weekly reports on Freedom to Write for Palestine, an event held last night at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City that featured writers who withdrew from PEN America’s World Voices Festival and Literary Awards, both of which were canceled last month.
New Literary Project announced that Ben Fountain, whose most recent novel is Devil Makes Three (Flatiron, 2023), has won the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. The $50,000 prize is given annually to a midcareer author of fiction. Fountain was chosen from a shortlist that included Jamel Brinkley, Patricia Engel, Idra Novey, and Bennett Sims.
In the Millions Mexican novelist Nicolás Medina Mora offers a critique of Latin American literature as a category: “What I’m trying to say is that, if one thinks about it for a moment, it becomes clear that ‘Latin America’ does not exist as a material reality. Much like the utopia of transnational friendship envisioned by the Mexican architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the region exists only in the imagination—even if this imaginary existence (like those of God, race, and currency) makes it ‘real’ enough to alter the course of history and shape individual lives.”
The Guardian profiles Argentinian author César Aira, reportedly a favorite to win the next Nobel Prize in Literature. “He has published more than one hundred novels, gives his work away, and his surrealist books have a massive cult following.”
Fast Company considers how efforts to ban books are ultimately backfiring on conservative activists, particularly those who target books that deal with race and racism: “Indeed, over the last five years, there has been a steady increase in books by and about people of color. And people are finding creative ways to make sure these books get out into the world.”
The winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced, including Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch for fiction, Cristina Rivera Garza’s Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice for memoir or autobiography, and Brandon Som’s Tripas for poetry.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the Netherlands’ largest book publisher, Veen Bosch & Keuning, reports Publishers Weekly. “The move marks the first major instance of a promised international expansion of S&S, which CEO Jonathan Karp alluded to last year following the acquisition of S&S by private equity firm KKR.”
University of Washington Magazine reflects on the legacy of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers fifty years after its first publication: “Aiiieeeee! became a foundational text in Asian American Literature, and its editors were credited for both rescuing stories out of time and opening readers to a diversity of voices and experiences from the Asian American community.”
“Garden of Time,” the theme of this year’s annual Met Gala—set to take place this evening—apparently derives from the 1962 short story by English author J. G. Ballard, “The Garden of Time.” The BBC considers the “delicious irony” of the ultra-exclusive fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute alluding to a tale in which “the super-rich hide themselves in Arcadian splendour while the ‘great unwashed’ riot.”
The Asian American Literature Festival will return this September without the involvement of the Smithsonian Institution, which last year cancelled it with little warning. “And instead of only being in Washington, D.C., the in-person and virtual events will be spread out nationwide,” reports ABC News.
Authors who withdrew from PEN America’s World Voices Festival and Literary Awards in protest of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza will be reading at an event called Freedom to Write for Palestine in New York City on Tuesday. The event will also raise funds for We Are Not Numbers, “a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project in Gaza that provides the world with direct access to Palestinian narratives.”
On JSTOR Daily Matthew Wills explores the origin of the penguin in the logo of Penguin Random House, previously Penguin Books, which launched in 1935.
Copper Canyon Press today announced that Ryo Yamaguchi is its new publisher. Yamaguchi was previously the publicist of Copper Canyon, an independent poetry press based in Port Townsend, Washington. Michael Wiegers will assume the role of the press’s artistic director in addition to his current position as executive editor, which he will continue.
The detention and imprisonment of writers reached a five-year peak last year, with at least 339 writers jailed worldwide, according to PEN America’s 2023 Freedom to Write Index. “War and conflict had a significant impact on writers in 2023, as the crackdown on dissent in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and in Russia resulted in substantial increases in the number of jailed writers, placing both countries in the top 10 for the first time,” according to the report.
Bianca Stone has been named the new poet laureate of Vermont.
The Denver Post reports that this year’s Readers Take Denver, an annual festival for fans of romance literature held earlier this month, is being denounced by attendees as “disorganized and chaotic,” on par with the 2017 Fyre Festival that led to prison time for its organizer, Billy McFarland. Next year’s festival has been canceled as a result.
ABC News reports on how a recent wave of book-banning efforts has specifically targeted the Asian American community.
Publishers Weekly offers a dispatch from the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University event held in Denver last week, including ideas from a “roundtable [that] addressed alternatives—or creative tweaks—to traditional publishing models.”
In light of the current unprecedented wave of book-banning efforts in the United States, the New York Times looks back at efforts that began fifty years ago to ban Robert Cormier’s 1974 novel, The Chocolate War.
The New York Times investigates the theft of 170 rare books by Russian classic authors worth more than $2.6 million from European libraries. “How Russian rare books came to be at the center of a possible multinational criminal conspiracy is a story of money and geopolitics as much as of crafty forgers and lackluster library security.”
A group of academics, including many poets and writers, have announced “an academic and cultural boycott of Columbia University and Barnard College” due to the university and college’s response to protestors demanding a divestment “from Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.” The list of signatories includes authors Jamel Brinkley, Alexandra Kleeman, Kiese Laymon, Claire Luchette, Solmaz Sharif, and others. The letter notes that “80% of educational facilities in Gaza have been partially or wholly destroyed, including every university, the Gaza Municipal Archive and hundreds of libraries, bookstores, and publishing houses.”
Liese Mayer has been appointed as executive editor of Little, Brown. “Mayer was most recently editorial director of fiction at Bloomsbury US, where she acquired and edited such titles as Women Talking by Miriam Toews, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy, Girlhood by Melissa Febos, and Zorrie by Laird Hunt,” writes Publishers Weekly.
Paul Auster, the critically acclaimed novelist and writer in nearly every genre, has died at age seventy-seven.
The New Yorker investigates the “Order of the Third Bird,” which is “an underground international fellowship, made up of artists, authors, booksellers, professors, and avant-gardists who try to understand what attention is, how to channel it, what it can do.”
Maryland has passed a Freedom to Read Act, joining a growing list of states supporting such legislation in response to an unprecedented wave of book-banning efforts. The law, signed by Maryland’s governor late last week, offers “a series of comprehensive protections for school and public library workers, as well as the materials acquired and housed in these institutions,” reports Book Riot.
Publishers Weekly reports on festivities held across the nation on Independent Bookstore Day, which was April 27. “Many stores partnered on organized crawls for book lovers, who received passports and stamps to mark their progress. Some booksellers in areas with large concentrations of stores—such as Chicagoland, which had 45 participating stores—went so far as to commission shuttle buses to more efficiently transport customers to different locations. (One bookseller reported that she took the opportunity to handsell a favorite read to customers during the bus ride.)”
Amid criticism that AI infringes on authors’ copyrights and otherwise poses a threat to the writing trade, some authors are using it to feed their creative process, reports NPR.
The Tampa Bay Times speaks with novelist Lauren Groff about her new bookstore in Florida, The Lynx, which opened on Sunday. “‘We did this because of book bans,’ Groff says. ‘We want to fight back against the chill of authoritarianism that is creeping across Florida.’”
PEN America has canceled its annual World Voices Festival after many writers declined to participate in protest of its response to the war in Gaza. PEN America’s CEO Suzanne Nossel has responded on MSNBC. The Atlantic offers some analysis about the future of the free speech organization after a series of controversies have rocked its operations this year: “Can an organization that sees itself as above politics, that sees itself straightforwardly as a support system for an open society, be allowed to exist anymore?”
On NPR Maureen Corrigan reviews a new collection of epistles by one of American poetry’s foundational voices: “The Letters of Emily Dickinson reads like the closest thing we'll probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet.”
Electric Literature lists its favorite indie bookshops, from Minnesota to Tennessee.
The Hudson Valley Book Trail in New York State has grown from a “doodle on the back of a bookmark” to a major tourist attraction leading literary pilgrims across eight counties and nearly forty bookstores that not only sell books but offer readings, trivia, live music, food, beer, and more, writes the Middletown Times Herald-Record.
Indiana Public Media speaks with a local library director about whether lending physical books will be a priority for public libraries in the future: “[P]ublic library services are increasingly about access to digital resources, whether through computers at the library itself, or online services. It also means the library space is about far more than reading. It’s not just teens who can do more there. It’s a space for public meetings, performances, book clubs, cooking demonstrations, and more.”
Was Shakespeare a writer of fan fiction? “Many of his major works draw their narrative core from classical or popular source material, ranging from Ovid to the Bible to the Decameron,” writes Betsy Golden Kellem at JSTOR Daily.
Two literary organizations are offering financial assistance to small presses affected by the closure of Small Press Distribution (SPD). The Poetry Foundation today announced a bridge fund through which nonprofit poetry presses can apply for grants to help cover costs incurred due to SPD’s closure. The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) announced a separate grant opportunity for nonprofit publishers based in New York that were affected by SPD’s shutdown.
The New York Times profiles Deep Vellum, an independent publisher and bookstore owner that has “put Dallas on the literary map.”
Condé Nast Traveler offers its take on the nine best literary festivals around the world.
A group of thieves has been arrested by European police for the heist of at least 170 rare books written by Russian authors, reports Barron’s. “The suspected thieves posed as researchers at libraries, distracting staff while an accomplice replaced the valuable first editions with a copy of ‘outstanding quality’.”
On Literary Hub Maris Kreizman unpacks the problematics of book preview lists touting most-anticipated titles, “a highly imperfect form of coverage.”
Linda Ewing is the new executive director of Coffee House Press, an independent publisher in Minnesota, reports Publishers Weekly. Ewing had been serving as interim executive director since last year, after the resignation Anitra Budd in 2022 and during “a wave of further resignations,” in which Coffee House lost one-third of its staff. Jeremy M. Davis will become Coffee House’s editor in chief after serving in the role of executive editor since last summer.
Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia, is fighting for the right to send books to people in prison after a county sheriff’s office blocked its delivery of books to the Gwinnett County Jail last year. “Avid is now suing the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office for violating the store’s civil rights to free expression, with the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic and civil rights attorney Zack Greenamyre as counsel. If successful, this case would establish approved vendor policies like Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office as unconstitutional,” writes the Progressive Magazine.
In the Financial Times Nilanjana Roy contemplates the particular joys and insights to be found in reading the letters of prominent authors.
Literary critic Helen Vendler—an influential scholar, thinker, and anthologist of poetry—has died at age ninety.
Public Books interviews novelist Francisco Goldman, who for the past thirty years “has produced a steady stream of ambitious, experimental works that resemble little else that has been published in the Anglophone world.”
Town & Country offers a guide to the many literary references in Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
On Literary Hub the duo behind Street Books—a bicycle-powered mobile library in Portland, Oregon—reflect on their work supporting unhoused readers by delivering books, eyeglasses, and other supplies needed to engage with literature.
Can book bans be banned themselves? The Associated Press reports that lawmakers in several traditionally Democratic states have proposed laws that do just that. Often referred to as “Freedom to Read” acts, the laws would prohibit or limit the ability of activists to remove from libraries books they claim are inappropriate for children or otherwise problematic.
Vox reports on “garbage e-books” overtaking Amazon: “It’s partly AI, partly a get-rich-quick scheme, and entirely bad for confused consumers”—and legitimate authors and publishers whose books are getting lost in the shuffle.
The New York Times reports on the cancellation of the PEN America Literary Awards after many authors withdrew their books from consideration amid criticism of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza.
Today is World Book and Copyright Day. In 1995 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated April 23 as an annual date “to recognize the contributions of books and authors globally,” writes the Business Standard.
Two authors made Time’s 2024 list of the one hundred most influential people: Lauren Groff and James McBride.
PEN America has canceled its 2024 literary awards ceremony after many authors withdrew their books from consideration in protest of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza, Publishers Weekly reports. At the direction of the Literary Estate of Jean Stein, PEN America will donate the $75,000 prize for the PEN/Stein award to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Winners will not be named for an award if the winning title had been withdrawn; PEN America is considering how to allocate prize money for categories in which no winner will be announced.
Milton, West Virginia, is the hometown of cult fiction icon Breece D’J Pancake, who died in 1979 at age twenty-six. The West Virginia Explorer considers the literary pilgrims who travel to Milton each year to visit landmarks they associate with the writer, whose legacy is all but unacknowledged by the town.
Literary-themed vacations are apparently a “hot new trend.” Esquire investigates the custom cruises, special libraries, and resort-hosted book clubs that are luring well-heeled readers and writers around the globe.
The Los Angeles Times reports from the Los Angeles Festival of Books, one of the nation’s largest literary events hosted this past weekend at the University of Southern California.
Publishers Weekly speaks with newer bookstore owners who have entered the business “as a career and as a means to advance personal priorities. They’re stocking shelves with books from BIPOC, LGBTQ, and global perspectives, seeking out local and underrepresented authors, and creating spaces for historically marginalized customers.”
The Forward reports on the withdrawal of many authors from consideration for this year’s PEN America Literary Awards amid criticism of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza. Camille T. Dungy remains the only author nominated for the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award who has not withdrawn her book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, from consideration. In a statement she told the Forward that she supports PEN America for its work against book banning: “Such bans are putting young people at risk, particularly Black, Brown, queer, and trans youths who can’t access books that represent and affirm who they are and who they need and want to be.”
Lord Byron died on this date, April 19, in 1924 at age thirty-six. Trinity College of the University of Cambridge in England, Byron’s alma mater, is hosting a festival honoring the Romantic poet this weekend, and other bicentennial events honoring him are being held elsewhere in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere.
The New York Times investigates “a shadowy corner of the rare book world”: volumes bound with human skin.
In an open letter, PEN America’s president, author Jennifer Finney Boylan, addresses criticism of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza, saying “a working group of authors and scholars [will] review PEN’s work—not just over the last six months, but indeed, going back a decade, to ensure we are aligned with our mission, and to make recommendations about how we respond to future conflicts.”
A formerly incarcerated writer reports that he and others who won PEN America’s Prison Writing Contest never received payments. After he tweeted about his lack of payment, the free speech organization used Zelle to pay him, he says. His cowriter on the story for Prism “identified five winners from 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 who are still missing a total of $925 in payments.” In a statement PEN America says it has “in all but one case, reconciled payment of the contest prize money” to six incarcerated writers it had identified as not receiving prize money and is otherwise putting measures in place to correct similar problems in the future.
Nonprofit Quarterly reports on the closure of Small Press Distribution, noting that it was “the only nonprofit literary distributor in the country.”
Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon, announced that it will celebrate its fortieth anniversary by moving into a more expansive downtown headquarters. The new digs, expected to open later this year, “will serve as a community and cultural hub with a bookstore and café, as well as classroom and event space, writing areas, staff offices and a recording studio.” The nonprofit literary organization aims “to engage readers, support writers, and inspire the next generation with great literature” by offering workshops, lectures, school programming, and more.
An exhibition of “book-like objects” dating from as early as the eighteenth century are now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 16, reports Fine Books & Collections magazine. Made of materials ranging from wood to precious metal, the curiosities include jewelry, toys, and tools that resemble literary volumes.
A beloved pro-democracy bookstore in Hong Kong called Mount Zero has closed amid increasing government scrutiny of the shop in the wake of Chinese security laws that have cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedom and independence, reports the Hong Kong Free Press.
Less than two weeks before the scheduled April 29 PEN America Literary Awards ceremony, more than a third of nominated writers and translators have withdrawn their names from consideration due to the organization’s response to the war in Gaza, reports Literary Hub. A letter from thirty nominated writers and translators reportedly sent to the PEN America Board of Trustees this morning called for the resignations of PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, PEN America President Jennifer Finney Boylan, and the entire PEN America Executive Committee.
The other four of the Big Five publishers have joined Penguin Random House in a lawsuit that aims to thwart a law in Iowa that bans books in school libraries that deal with sex, sexuality, and gender identity, Publishers Weekly reports. “We as publishers are uniting in our unwavering commitment to stand with educators, librarians, students, authors, and readers against the unconstitutional censorship measures being imposed by the state of Iowa,” the publishers wrote in a joint statement.
Translators are losing work because of language-generative AI, the Guardian reports. A survey by the Society of Authors—the United Kingdom’s largest trade union for writers, illustrators, and translators—found that more than a third of translators lost work due to the technology. Nonetheless, 37 percent of translators said they used AI to support their work.
A new literature museum will open in Hong Kong this June, reports Travel + Leisure. The Museum of Hong Kong Literature will store literary artifacts, mount exhibitions, and host literary exchange events.
Some publishers in the United Kingdom are looking toward AI to help sell books: Marketing tools that use generative AI “will enable the relatively smaller marketing resources of most publishers to punch way above their weight,” Sara Lloyd, global head of AI at Pan Macmillan, tells Fortune.
The New York Times reports on the closure of Small Press Distribution (SPD) and how hundreds of indie presses are working to claim remaining inventory and payments. SPD’s “dissolution is being overseen by the Superior Court of California, which will decide how to distribute any of S.P.D.’s remaining assets to creditors.” The nonprofit reportedly owes one small publisher, LittlePuss, $12,000, roughly a third of the small press’s revenue from last year.
PEN America has released a report on book banning efforts in school libraries, recording “more school book bans during the first six months of the 2023-24 school year than in all of 2022-23.” PEN America’s announcement follows a report by the American Library Association last month that found book banning had reached unprecedented levels last year in public and school libraries.
Deep Vellum, a nonprofit publisher and bookstore owner in Dallas, is planning to expand by opening offices in New York and possibly London, reports the Mercury, a publication of the University of Texas in Dallas.
Attendance at literary events in New York City is surging, prompting leaders in other industries to host readings, including in restaurants and fashion, reports the New York Times.
Masie Cochran is the new publisher and editorial director for Tin House Books, reports Shelf Awareness. Cochran had been serving as interim publisher and editorial director. She succeeds Craig Popelars, who left the press in October.
On Literary Hub Alissa Quart investigates the financial tenuousness of the writing life in a six-part series called “Cutting Class: On the Myth of the Middle Class Writer.”
Condé Nast Traveler profiles poet Hala Alyan. Listen to Alyan read from her new poetry collection, The Moon That Turns You Back.
The Associated Press reports on authors turning down awards and award consideration from PEN America in protest of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza.
The New York Times writes about Salman Rushdie and how he has been faring personally and professionally since he was attacked at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York in 2022. Rushdie’s memoir about the experience, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, will be published tomorrow by Random House.
