The U.S. Senate has confirmed Mary Anne Carter as the Chairman of the National Endowments of the Arts (NEA), according to a press release from the organization. Carter serves as the 14th leader of the NEA, returning to the role after leading the organization during the first Trump presidential term. “The arts are essential to creating, innovating, healing, and recovery, and they provide vital economic stability to communities across the nation,” said Carter in a statement on her appointment. “I look forward to the many celebrations that will take place in 2026 in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, as well as to the agency’s continued research into the powerful role the arts play in healing—from illness to trauma to natural disasters.” 

The Unterberg Poetry Center of New York City’s 92nd Street Y has digitized hundreds of audio recordings from its decades of events with literary luminaries, giving today’s listeners “a glimpse into history and a taste of what the writers themselves were like in public,” the New York Times reports. The recordings, the earliest of which date to 1949, include audio from events with Isaac Asimov, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Anaïs Min, and more, capturing authors’ tics, nerves, and charm. “Tom Wolfe was a fast talker. Eudora Welty had a musical Southern drawl. Kurt Vonnegut’s jokes got belly laughs.”

Conservative public interest law firm America First Legal filed a federal civil rights complaint against Penguin Random House (PRH) on December 16 with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission demanding there be an investigation into “apparent race- and sex-based discrimination in its hiring, promotion, and workforce development practices,” Publishers Weekly reports. PRH is the latest company to be targeted by the law firm, following Nike, Disney, and Mattel for their DEI policies. A spokesperson for PRH stated, “We are proud of our talented team of professionals and are confident that our employment practices comply with all applicable laws.”

Novelist Dinaw Mengestu, who leads the Center for Ethics and Writing at Bard College, has been elected president of PEN America, reports the New York Times. This change in leadership comes at a time when PEN is navigating “rising challenges to free speech across the country along with continuing fallout from criticism of its own response to the war in Gaza.” When asked about his priorities as president, Mengestu stated, “We really need to have an active literary presence on the board. It’s important that the free expression work is loud and at the forefront, and that it’s happening in partnership with the literary community. We also need to deepen our relationships with PEN International chapters. There’s a strong antidemocratic stream moving throughout the world. If there’s a moment when we can’t become a purely internal organization, it’s now.” 

Throughout this week, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has announced the longlists for their annual awards across the six categories of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, and criticism. This marks the second year in a row that the NBCC has shared their longlists since they began operating in 1974. The organization, which is comprised of over 700 book review editors and critics nationwide, also awards the “John Leonard Prize for the best first book in any genre; the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, for the best book of any genre translated into English and published in the United States; the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing; and the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award and Toni Morrison Achievement Award.”

A desire for escapist reading may be displacing readers’ interest in nonfiction, editor Emma Loffhagen writes for the Guardian. Disillusionment and weariness from relentless bad news seem to be driving the trend: A decade ago, during the era of Brexit and the first Trump administration, “it felt as though reading itself was part of the civic response, a way to understand what was happening, and perhaps influence what might happen next. Fast forward to the present day, and the picture is starting to look different: a recent report from NielsenIQ found that trade nonfiction sales have slipped sharply.” Podcasts may also be offering readers competing sources of information about matters of the day, futhering the move away from nonfiction books.

“This year’s library news featured as many plot twists and cliffhangers as a Dan Brown novel,” Publishers Weekly reports as it reflects on a year of book bans, federal funding upheavels, and questions about the place of artificial intelligence in the library. Other notable stories include the May firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and the closing of Baker & Taylor, the country’s largest library wholesaler.

PEN America has released a list of the top 52 banned books in public schools since 2021, when the organization began documenting “the unprecedented wave of censorship that now impacts millions of students across 45 states.” Leading the list is best-selling author John Green’s Looking for Alaska, which was banned 147 times. Two titles by Toni Morrison—The Bluest Eyes, banned 147 times, and Beloved, banned 77 times—are also on the list, which includes winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Stonewall and Lambda Literary Awards. In total, PEN America reports nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools since 2021, a figure it describes as “systemic censorship never before seen in the lives of living Americans.”

The Poetry Foundation is facing protests from employees, poets, and others in the literary community after the organization announced on December 1 that it was phasing out all public programming beginning in the new year, Publishers Weekly reports. Poetry Foundation staff say the decision “would result in substantial layoffs and a loss of support for the poets who are paid to read and present at events.” On December 15, members of the community also “published a letter they sent to the foundation’s senior leadership team earlier this month asking for them to retain the jobs of two longtime employees, Shoshana Olidort and Maggie Queeney, who are set to be laid off on December 31. In the letter, which is now open to the public for signatures, the employees urged the foundation to reconsider its decision in light of its responsibility to ‘mitigate harm to poetry and to the arts and education more broadly’ at a moment of ‘extreme political and economic turmoil.’”

Bennington College in Vermont has launched a new BFA program in creative writing through the college’s Conservatory for Creative Writing, the Bennington Banner reports. “While designed specifically for transfer students—rising sophomores and juniors—the program offers pathways for other prospective students, including first-year students, those continuing after an associate’s degree, and those who have taken a break from college. Students entering as sophomores will begin with general curriculum coursework before transitioning into the BFA; juniors transfer directly into the core creative writing program.”

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the longlist for the NBCC Award in Fiction: The Antidote (Knopf) by Karen Russell; Audition (Riverhead) by Katie Kitamura; The Book of Records(Norton) by Madeleine Thien; Heart the Lover (Grove) by Lily King, Long Distance (Bloomsbury) by Ayşegül Savaş; On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) (New Directions) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell; Sea, Poison (New Directions) by Caren Beilin; The South (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Tash Aw; We Do Not Part (Hogarth) by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris; and The Wilderness (Mariner) by Angela Flournoy.

Publishers Weekly looks at the steadily declining popularity of the mass market paperback, which from the late 1960s to the mid-90s drew millions of readers with its low prices and widespread availability. “The decision made this winter by ReaderLink to stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 was the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years. According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84 percent, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units.”

Haruki Murakami last week received two awards in New York City that honor for his career as an author, translator, critic, the Associated Press reports. “On Tuesday night, the Center for Fiction presented him its Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award, previously given to Nobel laureates Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro among others. Two days later, the Japan Society cohosted a jazzy tribute at The Town Hall, “Murakami Mixtape,” and awarded him its annual prize for ‘luminous individuals (including Yoko Ono and Caroline Kennedy) who have brought the U.S. and Japan closer together.’”

Publishers Weekly has named Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya as the 2025 Person of the Year. “With book banning efforts sharply on the rise a few years ago, it became clear to many, including...Malaviya, that the challenges weren’t one-offs but rather part of an organized, well-funded operation. To counter that campaign, Malaviya decided to throw the full weight of the country’s largest trade publisher into marshaling the opposition.”

Audible is partnering with TikTok “to help listeners discover top trending books and stories right inside the Audible app and web experience.” The collaboration creates “a seamless bridge” between what’s trending on BookTok and what listeners can access on Audible.

Best-selling author James Patterson has once again given “holiday bonus” checks of $500 each to independent booksellers, the Associated Press reports. “Over the past twenty years, Patterson has donated millions of dollars to schools, libraries, literacy programs and others in the book community. For the past several years, he has made a tradition out of sending $500 checks to 600 independent booksellers who have been recommended by peers or patrons. The list for 2025 ranges from Katie Gabriello, social media coordinator for Whitelam Books in Reading, Massachusetts, to store manager Kate Czyzewski of Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake, New Jersey.”

Willamette University and Pacific University have announced plans to merge into a new private university system, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. If the merger goes through, the proposed new system, tentatively called the University of the Northwest, would become the state’s largest private university with more than 6,000 students. Both Willamette and Pacific universities currently have low-residency MFA programs in creative writing. “Higher education institutions across the country are facing declining enrollment and budget difficulties, but leaders at Pacific and Willamette say they’re not pursuing the partnership due to financial challenges. They say the partnership will lead to better services and expanded career pathways for students, as well as create a regional workforce development hub.”

Darrell Kinsey is the winner of the Center for Fiction’s 2025 First Novel Prize for Natch (University of Iowa Press). “Joseph Earl Thomas, author of the 2024 First Novel Prize–winning novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, presented Kinsey with the award, which carries with it a prize of $15,000.”

Elaina Richardson is stepping down as president of the artist and writers retreat Yaddo, the New York Times reports. She has held the post for twenty-five years, during which time “she has increased Yaddo’s endowment from $8 million to $38 million and overseen significant upgrades to the 400-acre former summer home of Spencer and Katrina Trask, a financier and a writer who, after the deaths of their four young children, bequeathed their estate to artists seeking respite from the demands of everyday life.”

Oxford University Press has sold its New York City offices on Madison Avenue for $40 million, Publishers Weekly reports. “The sale comes just one week after Scholastic announced the sale of its own Manhattan headquarters, in addition to its primary warehouse located in Jefferson City, Mo., and plans to lease back part of the properties. Net proceeds for the Scholastic deal are expected to top $400 million.”