At a ceremony in New York City last night the Whiting Foundation announced the ten winners of the 2025 Whiting Awards. The $50,000 prizes are designed “to recognize excellence and promise in a spectrum of emerging talent, giving most winners the chance to devote themselves full time to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work.” The winners in poetry are Karisma Price and Annie Wenstrup; the winners in fiction are Elwin Cotman, Emil Ferris, Samuel Kọ́láwọlé, Claire Luchette, and Shubha Sunder; the winners in nonfiction are Aisha Sabatini Sloan and Sofi Thanhauser; and the winner in drama is Liza Birkenmeier. “These writers demonstrate astounding range; each has invented the tools they needed to carve out their narratives and worlds,” said Courtney Hodell, Whiting’s Director of Literary Programs. “Taken as a whole, their work shows a sharply honed sensitivity to our history, both individual and collective, and a passionate curiosity as to where a deeper understanding of that history can take us.” The Whiting Awards, established in 1985 by the Whiting Foundation, remain one of the most esteemed and largest monetary gifts for emerging writers.

On the occassion of this week’s centennial celebration of The Great Gatsby’s publication, Maureen Corrigan writes in the Washington Post about how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel was not popular during the author’s lifetime. “Eight months before he died,” Corrigan writes, “Fitzgerald pleaded with his editor at Scribner’s, the legendary Maxwell Perkins, to promote the book. ‘Would a popular reissue in that series with a preface not by me but by one of its admirers—I can maybe pick one—make it a favorite with class rooms, profs, lovers of English prose—anybody,’ he asked in a letter.”  

A new Thomas Pynchon novel, Shadow Ticket, will be published later this year, the New York Times reports. The novel is Pynchon’s first in more than a decade and is set in 1932 during the Great Depression. Shadow Ticket, which will be released on October 7 by Penguin Press, follows a private eye named Hicks McTaggart whose mission to find the heir to a Wisconsin cheese empire goes sideways when he ends up on a trans-Atlantic Ocean liner and then in Hungary.

Robert Caro, Salman Rushdie, and Sandra Cisneros were honored Monday night in New York City at an Authors Guild gala that celebrated the written word and its essential role in preserving democracy, the Associated Press reports.

The American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, whose members include museum and library workers, have sued Keith Sonderling, the acting director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in addition to the IMLS itself; President Trump; and U.S. DOGE Service acting administrator Amy Gleason, in addition to DOGE itself, Publishers Weekly reports. The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration’s recent actions attempting to defund and shutter the IMLS are both illegal and unconstitutional.

Book bans at military service academies have sparked criticism from Democrats in Congress, USA Today reports. The Pentagon has implemented Trump’s order to eliminate materials that could be considered promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Random House, 1969) by Maya Angelou was one of almost four hundred books removed from the Naval Academy’s library. Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee called the incident “an alarming return to McCarthy-era censorship” in a drafted letter to the military academies who removed the books.

Donovan Arthen, the interim executive director of Orion, has announced that Neal Thompson will be the magazine’s new publisher. Thompson is an author, journalist, editor, and literary arts funder. About his new appointment, Thompson said, “The work we do and the stories we tell are more important than ever. During challenging times—economically, politically, environmentally—we want readers to find comfort and inspiration in our pages, and we aspire to be an urgent and eloquent voice for the planet and all its creatures.”

Katrine Øgaard Jensen has been named the executive director of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Jensen joins ALTA from the Authors Guild, where she served as executive administrator and project manager.

Jeff O’Neal writes for Book Riot about Publishers Weekly’s decision to charge for review submissions. “[I]n this day and age of big tech platform media dominance, finding a new, sustainable, non-advertising revenue source is both clever and necessary.” He adds that the new policy “also has the secondary effect (perhaps primary?) of reducing the number of submissions.” Especially as AI-generated books flood the marketplace, he points out, the new guidelines will limit the number of books submitted for review consideration.

Attorneys general from twenty-one states have sued the Trump administration over its efforts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and six other federal agencies, Publishers Weekly reports. The lawsuit requests an emergency temporary restraining order that would invalidate the March 14 executive order that calls for the elimination of IMLS “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The plaintiffs include attorneys general from four states that Trump won in the 2024 election: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

The shortlist for the International Booker Prize has been announced, the New York Times reports. The list includes On the Calculation of Volume: 1 (Faber) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland; Perfection (Fitzcarraldo Editions) by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes; Small Boat (Small Axes) by Vincent Delecroix, translated from the French by Helen Stevenson; Under the Eye of the Big Bird (Granta Books) by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda; Heart Lamp (And Other Stories) by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi; and A Leopard-Skin Hat (Lolli Editions) by Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson.

The Naval Academy has removed nearly four hundred books that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from its library, the Hill reports. A spokesperson for the Navy confirmed that the books were removed “in order to ensure compliance with all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the President.”

On April 3, a federal judge in Rhode Island denied a motion to block the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from “prohibiting grant recipients from using grant funding to promote ‘gender ideology’ as defined by President Donald Trump in an executive order issued on January 20,” Publishers Weekly reports. The judge noted that following the filing of the lawsuit, the NEA retracted its implementation of the executive order, “pending further administrative review.” In a statement, ACLU senior staff attorney Vera Eidelman said that the opinion “makes clear that the NEA cannot lawfully reimpose its viewpoint-based eligibility bar.”

For the time being, standard printed books are exempt from the Trump Administration’s new tariffs, Publishers Lunch reports. However, printing involves other imported materials, like paper, that will be subject to price increases.

Boris Kachka writes for the Atlantic about the future of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) in Trump’s America. Though many universities, law firms, and corporations are capitulating to Trump’s demands, AWP’s executive director, Michelle Aielli, said that AWP will remain steadfast in its goals: “As of right now, the plan is not to scrub our website, not to change words, and, more importantly, not to change our mission,” she said. Anticipating the loss of a significant federal grant, the organization will focus on raising funding elsewhere.

Kevin Young, who has led the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. since 2021, stepped down as director of the museum on April 4, the New York Times reports. In an announcement, the museum said that Young wanted to focus on his writing; he remains the poetry editor of the New Yorker. In an executive order last month, Trump attacked the Smithsonian Museum network for coming “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” though it was reported that Young was already on personal leave at that time.

Denise Lyons writes for Library Journal about the role libraries play in disaster preparedness and recovery. Because public libraries are often located in central areas, they are strategic partners during crises, offering shelter and other basic needs during severe weather, coordinating efforts to donate materials, and collecting information and resources to distribute to their communities.

Four of the big five publishers—Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster—and Sourcebooks sent a letter asking Congress to defend libraries as federal library grant funding ends, Publishers Weekly reports. The letter asks Congress to “reject” Trump’s March 14 executive order calling for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). In their letter, the publishers maintain that “defunding libraries would result in mass closures and the destruction of a system that today benefits millions of Americans,” despite IMLS funding representing “just 0.003 percent of the federal budget.”

Twelve U.S. copyright cases against OpenAI and Microsoft have been combined in New York, even though most of the authors and newspapers suing the tech companies were opposed to centralization, the Guardian reports. The U.S. judicial panel on multidistrict litigation said that centralization will “allow a single judge to coordinate discovery, streamline pretrial proceedings, and eliminate inconsistent rulings.” Authors Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, and the comedian Sarah Silverman are among the authors whose cases will be transferred from California to New York and joined with cases brought by the New York Times as well as other authors, including John Grisham, George Saunders, and Jonathan Franzen.

On March 24, Publishers Weekly started charging $25 for every book submitted for review consideration in the weekly trade magazine. The new fee does not guarantee a review but “helps offset a small percentage of the costs of processing the large number of titles submitted to PW each year,” according to the announcement.