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News, Notes, Talk

The PEN World Voices Festival has been canceled.

Following months of escalating protests over its response to Israel’s war on Gaza, and just four days on from the cancelation of its annual literary awards, embattled free expression organization PEN America has now also announced the cancelation of its Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Refaat Alareer's daughter and grandchild have been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Shaimaa Alareer, an accomplished Palestinian illustrator and the eldest daughter of the murdered poet Refaat Alareer, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on her home in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City earlier today. The attack also claimed the lives of her Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Verso and other publishers are offering free ebooks in solidarity with pro-Palestine campus protests.

As students organize and resist to demand action and justice for Palestinians, publishers are offering free books on Palestine, protest, and more, in solidarity. Verso has seven ebooks available for download, including a case for sanctions against Israel, a collection Read more >

By James Folta

Tomorrow is Indie Bookstore Day! So you should go to a bookstore.

? It’s the moooost wonderfullll tiiiiime of the yeaaaar!? That’s right, folks: tomorrow is perhaps the greatest book-related holiday on the calendar: Independent Bookstore Day! As I’ve been saying at the top of bookstore events at my local indie (where Read more >

By Drew Broussard

More than a third of translators think they’ve already lost work to AI.

That’s according to a recently released survey by the Society of Authors, which heard from over 800 of their members about how they’re feeling about emergent technologies and their impact on their creative work. The Society, a UK-based trade organization Read more >

By James Folta

In light of SPD’s implosion, the Poetry Foundation announces a small press fund.

When SPD (Small Press Distribution) announced its sudden and immediate closure at the end of March, hundreds of small and indie presses were not only caught off-guard but immediately thrown into existential limbo. Publishers and authors took to whatever platforms Read more >

By Drew Broussard

Why you should get excited about the new Blood Meridian adaptation.

The late Cormac McCarthy was no stranger to the cinema. Several of the writer’s novels, plays, and screenplays—No Country for Old Men, All The Pretty Horses, The Sunset Limited—were adapted into buzzy films, though your mileage may vary re: success-of-translation. Read more >

By Brittany Allen

The American Academy in Rome has announced their 2024-25 prize winners in literature.

Out of over a thousand entrants, The American Academy in Rome has selected 31 artists and academics to receive their Rome Prize, a residency fellowship that provides a stipend as well as a place to live and work on the Read more >

By James Folta

Ukraine honors its own Tortured Poets Department.

Today on Xwitter, Ukraine offered up their own version of The Tortured Poets Department, honoring three Ukrainian writers who have died in the 790 days so far of the country’s war with Russia: Victoria Amelina, Maksym Kryvtsov, and Volodymyr Vakulenko. Read more >

By Drew Broussard

There’s a lot more hair than you think stored at the Library of Congress.

On April 24, 1800, President John Adams signed an Act of Congress that moved the U.S. capitol from Philadelphia to Washington, forever denying us the spectacle of Congressmembers being regularly heckled by Philly sports fans. In the move, Congress would Read more >

By James Folta

A new Mosab Abu Toha poetry collection is coming this fall.

Mosab Abu Toha—the Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was forced to flee Gaza with his family back in December—is set to release a new collection of poems this fall. According to the announcement made on Publishers Marketplace earlier today, Forest Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has announced their 2024 shortlist.

The Women’s Prize Trust, which “creates equitable opportunities for women in the world of books,” has announced the shortlist for its fiction prize, which spotlights English-language novels written by women. This year, the shortlists highlighted six novels that “both focus Read more >

By James Folta

Read China Miéville's powerful letter rejecting a German fellowship.

I stand in solidarity with the countless German workers and activists within institutions such as yours who are appalled by and fighting against the current climate of racism, censorship, rising authoritarianism and atrocity-denial. Free Palestine. –China Miéville   In a Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Please welcome the 2024-25 class of Cullman fellows.

The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center has announced its annual class of Fellows. Awarded annually, The Cullman fellowship entitles a gifted cadre of writers and academics to a year of funding, a private office, and Read more >

By Brittany Allen

The literary romantic holiday that should replace Valentine's Day.

I’ve never really liked Valentine’s Day. Some of that is probably down to being a shy nerdy kid who couldn’t get a date to the Snow Dance—but, at the risk of sounding even more like Charlie Brown, the holiday is Read more >

By Drew Broussard

Sad about Pitchfork? Try one of these classic collections of music writing.

On waking last Friday to news that somewhere, some poets were being tortured, I spent some time trawling through album reviews. Music criticism has always fascinated me. On the one hand, there is something ineffable baked into the enterprise. (I Read more >

By Brittany Allen