Little Free Library has produced an interactive map in collaboration with the American Library Association and PEN America in response to the nationwide surge in efforts to ban books from public and school libraries, Publishers Weekly reports. The map includes two main features: highlights, indicating where book bans are in effect at the state and county levels, and pinpoints, indicating the locations of Little Free Library’s book-sharing containers. The purpose of the initiative is to raise awareness about book banning and to leverage little free libraries to help distribute restricted books.

The National Book Foundation will present the 2024 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL) to Barbara Kingsolver at the 75th National Book Awards ceremony on November 20. Author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, investigative journalism, and science writing, Kingsolver has been honored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the James Beard Foundation, and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, among others. Her most recent novel, Demon Copperhead, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

Brendan Chambers puts Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso Books, 2024) in conversation with Daniel Wright’s The Grounds of the Novel (Stanford University Press, 2024) in an essay for Public Books on the value of literary theory. “To them,” Chambers writes, “literary theory can be either avant-garde or lyric, a tool for stepping back from the world or for more fully inhabiting it. Even as crises multiply, they assert that theory remains valuable.”

The New York Public Library will be opening a new exhibition on Lord Byron tomorrow, September 7. The exhibition explores the life of Byron (1788-1824) and features the cantos of Don Juan and other literary manuscripts, a portrait by Thomas Hargreaves, and letters from Byron’s mother, friends, and mistresses. 

NaNoWriMo, an annual challenge in which participants write a novel of at least 50,000 words in one month, has refused to “explicitly support” or “explicitly condemn” the use of AI assistance, the Atlantic reports. Many participants were angry at the organization’s decision but Gal Beckerman, a staff writer at the Atlantic, does not mind: “The world needs fewer novels, certainly fewer novels that have been written in a month,” he writes. “And artificial intelligence is itchy for distractions; we need to give the robots something to do before they start messing with nuclear codes or Social Security numbers.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a March 2023 court decision finding Internet Archive’s program to scan and lend print library books is copyright infringement, Publishers Weekly reports. Judge John G. Koeltl forcefully rejected the Internet Archive’s fair use defense and concluded that the organization’s use of the Works is “not transformative” as their counsel argued.

The Black List, an annual survey of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays, founded in 2005 by Franklin Leonard, is expanding into publishing, the New York Times reports. Leonard hired Randy Winston, the former director of writing programs at the Center for Fiction, to oversee the Black List’s development of a team to read and evaluate manuscripts. Like screenwriters who use the site, fiction writers can create a public profile on the Black List for free. They can post a novel-length unpublished or self-published manuscript on the site for a monthly fee of $30, and receive professional feedback on the first one hundred pages of their manuscript for $150.

In an interview with Renee H. Shea in World Literature Today, Threa Almontaser discusses her collection The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf, 2021), which received the Walt Whitman Award for best first book in 2020, her approach to craft, and her belief in poetry as a tool for social justice. “Poetry empowers hope,” Almontaser says. “And hope empowers the movement.”

The National Book Foundation announced it will present the 2024 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to W. Paul Coates at the 75th National Book Awards ceremony on November 20. Founder of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing, Coates has published original works by authors such as Amiri Baraka, Bobby Seale, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Ledia Xhoga, whose debut novel, Misinterpretation, was published yesterday by Tin House Books, discusses translation, migration, and writing in two languages at once with Electric Literature. “The translations, interpretations, everything—it happens because you are on a border,” Xhoga says. “That’s your reality, so that’s where you have to exist.”

On September 7 the Harlem Book Fair will celebrate 26 years under the theme of “literary revolution,” according to Publishers Weekly. Founder and publisher Max Rodriguez says the event is intended as a “rebirth” of the historically Black neighborhood’s literary lineage. Rodriguez planned to shutter the event after last year’s event, but with additional support from publishing veteran Yona Deshommes, the fair is back with a global focus, fourteen panels, and roughly one hundred exhibitors. It has also partnered with Harlem’s own Caribbean Cultural Center Diaspora Institute (CCCDI), and authors of Haitian backgrounds will be prominently featured in the programming.

PEN America reports that Russia’s crackdown on free expression is escalating: Three independent publishing projects and two small resellers were added to a list of prohibited websites and accused of publishing content containing “fake information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine, “LGBT propaganda,” and discrediting Russian government bodies or its Armed Forces.

Fewer books are published during the fall of a presidental election, the Washington Post reports. It is harder for authors to book promotional media appearances or garner attention from social media influencers and book bloggers with the news cycle around an election. Christina Ward, vice president and editor at the publisher Feral House, described publishing at the peak of an election cycle as “an unforced error.”

More than 180 council-run libraries have either closed or been handed over to volunteer groups in the UK since 2016, the BBC reports. A third of those remaining have had their hours reduced and at least three councils have at least halved their supply since 2016. Many of these libraries provided additional services besides book-lending, including literacy clubs, computer access, and warm spaces for people struggling with fuel poverty in winter.

Julian Lucas writes for the New Yorker about the novelist Danzy Senna’s humorous approach to the way biracial people are presented, questioned, overlooked, and exoticized in America. “The worst version of me would be writing about biracials in a respectful way,” Senna told Lucas. “I get to make fun of us incessantly.”

The Poetry Foundation has announced the schedule for ECOS, a three-day festival celebrating Latine poetry in Chicago from September 26-28. The literary events will be free and bilingual, presented with the North River Commission (Albany Park), the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (Humboldt Park), and the National Museum of Mexican Art (Pilsen). ECOS takes its name from the Spanish word for echoes and commemorates Chicago’s history of cultivating Latine poetry.

In a 120-year retrospective on the New York City subway as literary muse, the New York Times highlights archival photographs and literary quotes from authors such as Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Edith Wharton, and Ralph Ellison.

Six major publishers, the Authors Guild, and several best-selling authors have teamed up with students and parents in Florida to file a federal lawsuit challenging the state's new book banning law, Publishers Weekly reports. The complaint, which states that the law challenges the First Amendment, specifically takes issue with two parts of the law: one that broadly prohibits books in public schools that contain any content that “describes sexual conduct,” and another that bans books that contain allegedly “pornographic” content “without consideration of the book as a whole, as the Supreme Court requires.”

In an interview with Electric Literature, author Samuel Kọ́láwọlé discusses his novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, and the validity of depicting violence on the page. “Art does not exist in a vacuum, and artists live in a real world where people are confronted daily with violence and its consequences,” he says. “Since violence is part of our collective experience and consciousness, shouldn’t it also be part of our art?”

The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance (NCBLA) is spearheading a new project called Empowering Young Writers, Publishers Weekly reports. The series of slideshows and educational resources, collected from over 500 children’s books, illustrate various writing elements and techniques for students in fourth to ninth grade. The online tools are available for free, and designed to support teachers, librarians, and parents.