The Maryland Board of Education has reversed a decision by Harford County schools to ban Mike Curato’s 2020 illustrated novel Flamer from its libraries, CBS News reports. “The state Board of Education also recommended that Harford County schools revise its evaluation procedures to ensure transparency, provide opportunities for public participation and handle future reconsideration matters. The decision comes after the county school board voted to ban the book during a closed-door session in June, sparking protests from some community members.”

The New York Times takes a final look at the finalists for this year’s Booker Prize, the winner of which will be announced on Monday in London. “Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the favorite, but books by Andrew Miller, Katie Kitamura and Susan Choi are also in the running for the prestigious award.”

Publishers Weekly unpacks a new study, commissioned by the Gotham Ghostwriters and Bernoff.com, showing that “while most professional writers are embracing AI tools, authors, specifically fiction authors, are much more wary.” The study contains responses from 1,481 working writers, including 291 fiction authors; it reveals that nearly half (49 percent) of those fiction authors never use AI. “The report found that the heaviest AI users are thought leadership writers (84 percent), PR/comms professionals (73 percent), and content marketing writers (73 percent). Excluding fiction authors, the writing professionals least likely to use AI in their work are copy editors (33 percent), journalists (44 percent), and technical writers (52 percent).”

The British edition of GQ looks into the fashion industry’s supposed embrace of literature, with reading series serving as “the institutional glue” via which London’s “arty, cool, young(ish) community networks, parties, and hunts for romantic partners.” Josiah Gogarty writes: “As a lifelong book nerd, I would of course argue literature has always been cool, in a way. Certain guys and girls have always had hearts that do somersaults when they see someone cute tucking into Virginia Woolf or Martin Amis. But the boundaries of literature’s status have, in recent years, extended out of corduroy trouser land and deep into the more straightforwardly glamorous world of fashion and celebrity.”

The New York Times looks at bookstores as places of refuge and important sources of community in Russia, where censorship and restrictions on publishers and booksellers have grown more severe.

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, an all-volunteer project to document everything on display at the Smithsonian’s twenty-one museums, the National Zoo, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, plans to make the archive’s photos and videos accessible to the media and the public, according to Library Journal. “The initiative is a response to an August letter sent by the Trump administration to the Smithsonian Institution secretary stating that exhibits were subject to review and revision in an effort to ‘reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.’”

Fantagraphics will launch an imprint dedicated to East Asian comics and graphic novels next spring, Publishers Weekly reports. “Takumigraphics will put out 16 titles per year beginning next spring, with Fantagraphics editor Conrad Groth, president Eric Reynolds, and associate publisher Gary Groth leading acquisitions.”

Yale University has no official policy on the use of artificial intelligence by students in its English deparment, so professors are taking a range of approaches to confronting it, according to a report by Yale News. “There has been ‘no call’ for a department-wide policy, Director of Undergraduate Studies Stefanie Markovits wrote in an e-mail to the News, ‘most likely because we have a general belief in academic freedom in the classroom.’ Professors are adapting in their own ways, but they agree on one thing: AI is detrimental to critical thinking and creative writing.” 

Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior issued a statement apologizing to children’s book author Kate Clanchy for the publisher’s response to an online dispute back in 2021 in which Clanchy “was accused of using racist descriptions of children in her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me,” the BBC reports. Clanchy, whose book won the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2020, says she “never felt supported by them for a minute” and that “they were absolutely unsupportive” through the controversy. “I’m sorry for the hurt that was caused to Kate Clanchy and many others,” Prior said in the statement.

A new French literary award will honor a “French lesbian novel” chosen by a jury of ten artists and book industry professionals, Le Monde reports. On November 7, three days after the Prix Goncourt, or Goncourt Prize, is given by the Académie Goncourt to the author of “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year” in France, the winner of the Prix Gouincourt (“gouine is a slang term for lesbian”) will be announced by organizers Lauriane Nicol and Alex Lachkar.

The next issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is packaged in a nostalgic three-ring “Trapper Keeper–style binder,” according to SFGate. “A few of the standout pieces include an accordion-shaped treatise on flowers by Pulitzer Prize finalist Yiyun Li and a 48-page sketchbook of drawings from Sacramento cartoonist Adrian Tomine. The issue will ship out to the magazine’s nearly 6,000 subscribers, with the remaining 3,000 copies available for sale online and in bookstores for the retail price of $46 on November 20.”

According to Nigel Newton, the founder and CEO of the book publisher Bloomsbury, authors will come to rely on artificial intelligence to help them beat writer’s block, the Guardian reports. “I think AI will probably help creativity, because it will enable the 8 billion people on the planet to get started on some creative area where they might have hesitated to take the first step,” he reportedly told PA Media. Newton is also quoted as saying: “We are programmed deep in our DNA to be comforted by the authority and the reliability of big brand names, and that applies more than ever to the names of big writers.”

Library Journal shares details from Clarivate’s annual “Pulse of the Library” report that shows “a growing number of libraries are exploring or implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025 (67 percent, compared with 63 percent in 2024), although the majority are in the earliest evaluation stages.” The report, based on a survey of 2,032 librarians from 109 countries representing academic, public, and national libraries, “also notes that there is a wide variation between academic and public libraries with AI adoption.”

Publishers Weekly unpacks a recent report from the Association of American Publishers that shows books sales continued to fall in August. “Total industry sales were down 4.4 percent in the month compared to last August and sales fell in every segment. The report, based on data from 1,320 publishers, followed a July report in which total sales were down 4.2 percent.”

Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, laid off thirteen staff members this week, bringing the total number of layoffs to thirty-one in the past few months, KOIN 6 News reports. “As with many businesses right now, we’re seeing expenses rise faster than sales,” a Powell’s spokesperson is quoted as saying.

Porter Anderson of Publishing Perspectives looks at AI usage in the publishing industry, sorting through data revealed in a September 2025 study by the Book Industry Study Group. According to the study, which surveyed people working for publishers, libraries, and service providers or vendors, “slightly lesss than half of inviduals are using AI for work now” and “the majority of organizations that are using AI lack formal policies or guidelines.” The study also shows that “31 percent of respondents said they are ethically opposed to the use of AI; 33 percent said they’re not interested in using AI to support their work; and 43 percent said AI training is not a good use of their time.”

In an essay for the Rumpus, Sean Cho A. writes about the experience of teaching college students during the rise of artificial intelligence. “A chatbot can generate lecture slides with more efficient scaffolding than I ever will. A bot can sort discussion board posts by keyword or sentiment. But bots will never notice the shift in someone’s voice when they say ‘home’ versus when they say ‘mother.’ It will never register the second eye-roll, the one meant not for disdain but for solidarity. It will never mishear ‘Homeric’ as ‘homely’ and accidentally create an entire week’s worth of discussion about what makes a hero.”

Two novels by George Orwell have been translated into Welsh for the first time, the BBC reports. Animal Farm (1945) is set in northwest Wales in the Welsh edition, published by Melin Bapur, “with Orwell’s classic characters given Welsh names to add authenticity,” and 1984, published in 1949, “contains a Welsh version of Newspeak, the novel’s fictional language.”

More than three hundred writers, scholars, and public figures, including past contributors to the newspaper, have refused to write for the New York Times Opinion section in a collective effort “to hold the paper accountable for its role in the genocide in Gaza,” according to the Wire. Among the signatories of the public statement are authors Sally Rooney, Kiese Laymon, Catherine Lacey, Kaveh Akbar, Mosab Abu Toha, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jia Tolentino, and Omar El Akkad.

Sam Spratford of Publishers Weekly writes about a new coworking, continuing education, and community space for writers, agents, and editors in San Francisco. The Backstory Above, opening in the city’s Sunset District on November 1, aims “to help members of the San Francisco literary community deepen their craft, create and collaborate with each other in a peaceful working environment.”