[{"id":275960,"date":"2026-08-20T09:01:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275960"},"modified":"2026-08-20T17:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:51:36","slug":"heres-the-winner-of-the-the-2026-inside-literary-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/heres-the-winner-of-the-the-2026-inside-literary-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s the winner of the 2026 Inside Literary Prize."},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the Inside Literary Prize<\/a>, the US’s only literary prize judged by incarcerated readers, announced its 2026 winner: The Book Censor’s Library<\/a><\/em>, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain.<\/p>\n

The Inside Literary Prize, which was founded in 2023 by Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation, the Center for Justice Innovation, and Interabang Books co-owner Lori Feathers, “celebrates the power of literature by amplifying the insight, humanity, and voices of readers living in prison confinement.”<\/p>\n

Each year, the prize curates a shortlist of books previously honored by the National Book Foundation, and sends them to prisons across the country.\u00a0 This year, almost 200 incarcerated judges considered five 2024 National Book Award finalists in Fiction and Translated Literature, and chose The Book Censor’s Library<\/em> as the winner. (The other finalists were \u00c6dnan<\/a><\/em> by Linnea Axelsson translated by Saskia Vogel, All Fours<\/a><\/em> by Miranda July, Martyr!<\/a><\/em> by Kaveh Akbar, and My Friends<\/a><\/em> by Hisham Matar.)<\/p>\n

“I think The Book Censor’s Library<\/em> is what the world needs most,” said Kyra L., a judge at Washington Corrections Center for Women, in a statement. “Without a core of literature, all voices are lost. If we don’t protect our right to choose what matters, history will be rewritten. No one single power should get to choose. Cultural exchange, perspective, and the fostering of ideas will all be stifled without full access to literature.”<\/p>\n

\u201cBooks have the power to connect us across walls and circumstances,\u201d added Reginald Dwayne Betts, Freedom Reads Founder & CEO. \u201cThe Inside Literary Prize brings incarcerated readers into the heart of our literary conversation, reminding us that when we include more voices in conversations about great books, we remind ourselves of literature\u2019s purpose and possibility to bring transformation and hope to people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the Inside Literary Prize, the US’s only literary prize judged by incarcerated readers, announced its 2026 winner: The Book Censor’s Library, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain. The Inside Literary Prize, which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":248951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43092,43646],"tags":[43566,100545,17206,94490,52192],"class_list":["post-275960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsandculture","category-the-hub","tag-bothayna-al-essa","tag-inside-literary-prize","tag-literary-prizes","tag-ranya-abdelrahman","tag-sawad-hussain"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19MY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Social_Preview_ILP_Overview_Webpage-e1738353747972.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275970,"date":"2026-08-20T07:56:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T11:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275970"},"modified":"2026-08-20T07:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T11:56:31","slug":"in-praise-of-wordy-old-prose-or-fck-your-ai-reading-buddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/in-praise-of-wordy-old-prose-or-fck-your-ai-reading-buddy\/","title":{"rendered":"In Praise of \u201cWordy, Old Prose.\u201d (Or, F*ck Your AI Reading Buddy)"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than two years ago I wrote an angry piece about how lame the bulletpointization of books<\/a> is: the point of reading and engaging with books is not so the reader can consume little bullet points of knowledge.<\/p>\n

But since then technofascism has gained so much traction that art and being challenged by art has been completely devalued. Last week the publisher of Axios, Nicholas Johnson, published a post<\/a> about how AI became his \u201creading buddy,\u201d helping him to elucidate themes and \u201cmake sense of wordy, old prose.\u201d In other words Johnson is bragging about outsourcing the act of trying<\/i> while reading.<\/p>\n

In our convenience-obsessed world it\u2019s more important than ever to celebrate the existence of literary friction, the kind of writing that doesn\u2019t go down in one easy gulp, that makes you sit in your uncertainty or even discomfort. This kind of contemplation is a big part of how you grow as a reader and a thinker. And yeah, I think that certain reading experiences should<\/i> allow people to grow.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with quick and easy reads that are meant to be consumed for sheer pleasure. I would never knock a good page-turner. But that\u2019s only one kind of reading.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about the kind of reading that was once taught in high schools and higher ed, but apparently not so much<\/a> anymore<\/a>. The kind of reading that had me puzzling through all 880 pages of Middlemarch<\/i> as a college student when I would much rather have been participating in an event called Thirsty Thursday at my local campus bar. All of those nights at the college dive blur together; reading Middlemarch<\/i> remains a seminal experience.<\/p>\n

The fear of discomfort is so widespread that it\u2019s even a huge factor in why book bans and other forms of censorship are rampant today.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also not just talking about the great works of literature. In this age of AI and optimization and convenience at all costs, the ability to wrestle with just about any text and glean some understanding of it is what turns people into life-long readers. As Megan Greenwell reported in a chilling story for WIRED<\/em>, children<\/a> can still read words just fine, but they have trouble making meaning out of those words and that, of course, is a primary reason to read books. One educator told her, \u201cThey\u2019re reading probably more than they ever have, but it\u2019s snippets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even book criticism isn\u2019t safe. As publications divest from straight book reviews in favor of more \u201cuser-friendly\u201d formats, there is less space on the page for ambiguity. I say this as someone who has written a lot of editorial lists in her day: the best book coverage grapples<\/i>, it doesn\u2019t merely catalogue. Good criticism is about placing a new piece of art in conversation with our larger culture. Much like good fiction, criticism helps us to understand complicated ideas and to see the world more clearly. It\u2019s important. Related: most of the job listings I receive lately from LinkedIn want me to use my many years of editorial experience and expertise in order to train AI.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about literary friction when I read Missouri Williams\u2019s new novel The Vivisectors<\/a><\/em> and found parts of it inscrutable, and parts of it completely frustrating. I felt lost and I hate to feel lost. But I also did a lot of underlining while reading\u2014so much of the text made my brain light up. In the end I tried to let the book wash over me like poetry rather than trying to decode it and that truly made me enjoy it. I gave myself permission to sit with the ambiguity the book left me feeling, and isn\u2019t that wonderful? It is, I promise you.<\/p>\n

The fear of discomfort<\/a> is so widespread that it\u2019s even a huge factor in why book bans and other forms of censorship are rampant today. From the books recently removed from a Glendale, Arizona school district\u2019s middle school curriculum<\/a> (just the latest example I could find) to the English professor in Florida who was fired<\/a> for assigning her adult-aged class an Ottessa Moshfegh story, educators and students are suffering the consequences of parents and administrators who are unable to tolerate a little cognitive dissonance or unease.<\/p>\n

In other words, the fact that slavery happened in America or that gender-nonconforming people exist in the world, among other topics, upsets wannabe book banners so much that they feel entitled to legislate who can and can\u2019t read books about such topics. Educators and librarians are already experts in which books are age-appropriate for their students; they don\u2019t need help from a racist peanut gallery (I include the Senate<\/a> and the House<\/a> in this categorization) that is unable to tolerate any hint of literary friction.<\/p>\n

The act of thinking and learning and growing is anathema to our increasingly fascistic world. Which is all the more reason to double down on them. Questioning everything is the one way every single one of us can fight the tide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than two years ago I wrote an angry piece about how lame the bulletpointization of books is: the point of reading and engaging with books is not so the reader can consume little bullet points of knowledge. But since<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4408,"featured_media":275976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43445],"tags":[20922,45150,73211,6651,111885,20962,76254,168,62341,110429],"class_list":["post-275970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-axios","tag-book-banning","tag-literacy","tag-literary-friction","tag-maris-kreizman","tag-missouri-williams","tag-reading","tag-summaries","tag-the-vivisectors"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19N8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/old-text.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4408"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275961,"date":"2026-08-20T06:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275961"},"modified":"2026-08-20T09:12:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:12:52","slug":"lit-hub-daily-august-20-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-daily-august-20-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Daily: August 20, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":" TODAY: In 1858, Charles Darwin publishes his first theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London<\/i>, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace\u2019s same theory. <\/span>\n