USA Today looks at the new report by PEN America that shows the number of nonfiction books banned at schools has doubled. The report found that “3,743 unique titles were removed from school classrooms and libraries from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. There were 6,780 total bans across 23 states during that period, according to the organization.” More than 1,000 of the titles, or 29 percent of the total, were nonfiction, more than double the number from the previous year. PEN America says the rise in censorship is due to a widespread “embrace of anti-intellectualism” and that the data “mirrors the broader political attack on facts and knowledge and a skepticism, disdain, and devaluing of experts and expertise—tactics long associated with the rise of authoritarian regimes to sow distrust in democratic institutions.”

Shelf Awareness, the publisher of two newsletters focused on books, bookselling, and book reviews, recently alerted subscribers to the phishing schemes that have become ubiquitous in the publishing and writing communities. “We have learned that Shelf Awareness and its staff are being used in phishing attempts directed at book authors,” the editors wrote in Wednesday’s newsletter. “Shelf Awareness does not charge for review coverage. If you receive an offer over e-mail to review your book in return for payment, it is a scam, and you should not interact with the sender.”

Daniel Umemezie of Cedar Falls, Iowa, was named the 2026–2027 National Youth Poet Laureate at a ceremony in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 25, according to Urban Word. Asked what his focus will be as the youth poet laureate, Umemezie said, “During my tenure as National Youth Poet Laureate, I want to champion work that refuses to make itself legible on anyone else’s terms: multilingual poetry, diasporic poetry, poetry as a form of political insistence, and poetry as self, because I believe that when a young writer chooses to inhabit the fiery tension between who they are and how they express that identity, they embody art itself.” An initiative of Urban Word, the National Youth Poet Laureate program identifies, celebrates, and honors teen poets who exhibit a commitment to not just artistic excellence but also civic engagement, youth leadership and social impact.

Poets & Writers today announced that Marianne Boruch is the winner of the 2026 Jackson Poetry Prize, a $100,000 award given to “an American poet of exceptional talent.” Established in 2006 with a gift from the Liana Foundation, the Jackson Poetry Prize is bestowed annually by Poets & Writers and named for the John and Susan Jackson family. The judges were Major Jackson, Cole Swensen, and Afaa Michael Weaver. “In poems rhetorically sinuous and compelling, Marianne Boruch renders luminous the expanse and reach of human thought,” the judges wrote in their citation. Boruch is an emeritus professor of creative writing at Purdue University, where she founded the MFA program and taught for more than thirty years. She has written eleven books of poetry, most recently Bestiary Dark (Copper Canyon Press, 2021).

Students at Southern Oregon University (SOU) in Ashland are opposing a plan released on Monday “that details some $20 million in suggested cuts from the university, including the Music, Gender Studies, Creative Writing, and International Studies programs,” Ashland.news reports. The school’s board of trustees is expected to vote on the plan on Friday, May 8. “The board must submit the final plan to the Higher Education Coordinating Commission by Monday, May 11, in order to be eligible to receive $15 million in one-time funding from the state of Oregon to keep the university solvent until summer 2027.” Some have accused Deloitte Consulting, a firm that has been actively involved in restructuring SOU, of using AI to formulate the plan; SOU officials have denied the claim.

For the Guardian, Raina Lipsitz takes a closer look at the circumstances surrounding the April decision by the legislature of Green County, New York, to rescind Esther Cohen’s appointment as the county’s first poet laureate after Republican legislator Michael Lanuto performed a “background check” during which he found in Cohen’s social media what he said was “the antithesis of what I believe this board stands for,” citing social media posts “about Zohran Mamdani (for) and Donald Trump (against).” Lipsitz quotes Bjorn Thorstad, founding executive director of the Hudson Valley Writers Residency and a member of the committee that selected the poet laureate, who says people see people view Cohen’s story “as emblematic of the assault on the arts writ large. ... Even though it’s only about one poet, even though government has a right to be discerning about its appointees, it’s nevertheless cutting too close to the bone for people who hate to see leadership leverage power against artists and free speech.”

Best-selling novelist Scott Turow has joined publishers Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage in filing a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, the New York Times reports. “The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday morning in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Meta and Zuckerberg of illegally using millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence program Llama, and of removing copyright notices and other copyright management information from those works.” The lawsuit also claimes that Zuckerberg personally authorized and encouraged the illegal activity. A Meta spokesperson says the company “will fight this lawsuit aggressively.”

USA Today visits Audible Story House, the world’s first bookless bookstore now open in New York City. The store, which is free and open to the public Wednesdays through Sundays during May, features more than three hundred audiobook titles that customers can sample. “Not quite a bookstore and also not quite a library, Story House is a community hub and listening lounge for readers to hang out and discover a new audio obsession,” Clare Mulroy writes.

Oprah Winfrey has selected John of John (Grove Atlantic, 2026), the third novel by Douglas Stuart, for her book club, the Associated Press reports. The best-selling author won the Booker Prize for his debut novel Shuggie Bain (Grove Atlantic 2020). To read more about John of John, read “Ten Questions for Douglas Stuart.”

Employees at the University of Chicago Press are the latest group of publishing workers to unionize, according to Publishers Lunch, having formed a union with the Chicago News Guild, TNG-CWA Local 34071. “The UPC Workers Guild is seeking recognition from management and ‘is advocating for nothing less than excellence in the treatment of the press’s workers.’ Its mission includes ‘pay equity, sustainability, and transparency.’” Last week workers at Hachette Book Group formed the largest union in publishing history, and in April workers at Catapult unionized.

The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today. The winner in poetry is Juliana Spahr for Ars Poetica (Wesleyan University Press); the finalists are Douglas Kearney for I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always (Wave Books) and The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Smith. The winner in fiction is Daniel Kraus for Angel Down (Atria Books); the finalists are Katie Kitamura for Audition (Riverhead Books) and Torrey Peters for Stag Dance: A Quartet (Random House). The winner in memoir/autiobiography is Yiyun Li for Things in Nature Merely Grow (FSG); the finalists are Anelise Chen for Clam Down: A Metamorphosis (One World), Sarah Chihaya for Bibliophobia (Random House), and Hala Alyan for I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press). 

On the heels of the recent film release of The Devil Wears Prada 2, Julia Rittenberg of Publishers Weekly uncovers the rise and fall of the chick lit genre. “Before it was a movie, Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada, published by Broadway Books in 2003, marked the absolute high point of that once ubiquitous genre.” Chick lit is said to have started thanks to the success of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary in 1996. However, soon after The Devil Wears Prada phenomenon, the chick lit market became oversaturated and the trend eventually fell off with the once overarching genre now being fragmented into distinct categories of romance or women’s fiction. “The millennials and Gen Z readers all have authors who are speaking to them, who are telling their story,” says Deborah Schneider, Weisberger’s longtime agent. “They’re writing a different story now, and it’s a little bit darker.”

Pizza Hut’s summer reading program is coming back this year to incentivize young readers with pizza parties, reports People Magazine. The BOOK IT! program recently announced the return of “Summer of Stories,” where kids from pre-K through sixth grade can earn personal pizzas and more for meeting reading goals. This time around, the program is also available for parents and teachers to utilize during the school year. 

TIME Magazine has listed Bookshop.org as one of “The 10 Most Influential Social Good Companies of 2026,” alongside Dr. Bronner’s, Land O’Lakes, and Bombas. Last year, the company that is known for saving independent bookshops provided a record $9.5 million to local bookstores. Bookshop.org’s founder, Andy Hunter, has continued to expand the company’s reach and offerings with an e-book platform and the current development of an e-reader, stating, “Within the next two years we want to be the best place to shop online if you love books.” 

Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House UK, is launching the publisher’s first horror imprint, 3AM Books, the Bookseller reports. Led by publishing director Rachel Winterbottom and editorial director Simon Taylor, the imprint takes its name from the witching hour, “the moment when the world feels most heightened, uncanny and like anything might happen.” The list aims to “reflect the full range and ambition of horror today, bringing together established voices, bold new talent and a growing community of readers.” 3AM’s first title, Fawn by debut author and journalist CN Vair, is forthcoming in August.

Publishers Weekly reports on a new survey of more than five hundred publishers, librarians, and other industry professionals, sponsored by BISG and BookNet Canada, on how AI “can be effectively and ethically used.” Of those surveyed, 48 percent said their organizations use AI; 29 percent use it for administrative and operational tasks, another 29 percent use it for marketing activities, and 21 percent use it for data analysis or reporting. “The primary concern for survey respondents around AI in the industry is inadequate controls around the use of copyrighted material, with 86 percent noting the issue.”

May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and the Los Angeles Public Library is celebrating with the third annual AAPI Joy Festival on Saturday, May 16. The free event, themed “AAPI Voices, Then & Now,” will honor the diversity, culture, and contributions of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities through author talks, theater, culinary demonstrations, workshops, and crafts. “Highlights include lion dancers, Japanese dance performances, Korean fabric art, lei making, and the Carlos Bulosan Book Club Awards, presented by the Friends of Echo Park Library, honoring literary figures who have made significant contributions to Filipino American literature and community advocacy.” Featured authors include Livia Blackburne, Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes, Angie Kang, Stacey Lee, Aimee Phan, Kim-Hoa Ung, and Oliver Wang.

USA Today reports on the scourge of AI-powered scams impersonating famous authors that are flooding the writing community. In one scam, a bot that purports to be best-selling author Colleen Hoover is offering to get a writer’s book featured in USA Today for the low, low price of $200. “Scammers impersonate well-known authors. Others pose as book clubs and offer to get your book in front of hundreds of readers for a fee. Some tease a shortcut to a Hollywood adaptation deal. These days, the emails often open with flowery, highly specific praise about the book. Artificial intelligence has scraped the book’s copy and polished its own words to seem like a real, emotional appeal.” For more on scams targeting writers, read Poets & Writers Magazine’s collection of coverage on the topic.

PEN America recently announced that the Rutherford County Library Alliance, a local coalition of library advocates in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, will receive the PEN/Benenson Courage Award at the 2026 PEN America Literary Gala on May 14. “The all‑volunteer alliance galvanized its community against book bans and led opposition to a library board order to remove children’s books deemed ‘inappropriate,’” the organization said in a press release. “The county library director was fired for refusing to carry out the order.” The PEN/Benenson award honors individuals for exceptional courage in defending free expression often in the face of personal danger or intense public scrutiny.

The Academy of American Poets recently announced plans for a new prize honoring the work of Louise Bogan and her lasting impact on poetry and poetry criticism. Recipients of the $5,000 Louise Bogan Award for Poetry and Criticism will be selected annually by the Academy of American Poets’ board of chancellors. The first winner will be announced during National Poetry Month in April 2027. There is no submission process. Bogan, the fourth U.S. poet laureate, was an acclaimed poet who received Yale University’s Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1955 and the Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship in 1959, among other honors. She was also a critic and a longtime poetry reviewer for the New Yorker.