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.

Eve Bridburg, the founder and executive director of GrubStreet, is stepping down from her role at the end of 2025. Bridburg served as executive director for fifteen years and founded GrubStreet twenty-eight years ago. In a statement posted to GrubStreet’s website she wrote, “Our mission and vision have never mattered more. In moments like this—when human and civil rights are under attack and polarization is deepening—we need writers to help us understand the world, frame and reframe the issues, and imagine new possibilities.”

Kevin Young, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., has been on leave since March 14, two weeks before Trump targeted the Smithsonian Museum network with an executive order, the Guardian reports. Trump’s order called for the end of what he described as “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” within the Smithsonian.

The Trump administration is demanding enormous cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the New York Times reports. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is recommending that the NEH reduce its staff by 70 to 80 percent (approximately 180 people). Additionally, the DOGE recommendations could amount to a termination of all grants made under the Biden administration that have not been fully paid out. The NEH was founded in 1965 and has distributed more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historical sites, universities, libraries, and other cultural institutions since then.

Arts and cultural industries grew at twice the rate of the U.S. economy between 2022 and 2023, adding $1.2 trillion, according to new data from the Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA). ACPSA is a product of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The National Book Foundation has announced this year’s 5 Under 35 honorees: Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, Megan Howell, Maggie Millner, Alexander Sammartino, and Jemimah Wei. All the writers will receive $1,250 at a public ceremony in New York on June 4.

The nonprofit that created National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is shutting down, Publishers Weekly reports. The organization, which became a 501(c)(3) in 2005, is closing after various controversies regarding the nonprofit’s stance on AI and content moderation, as well as financial difficulties. NaNoWriMo seemed to endorse the use of generative AI to write novels last fall, and following outcry, amended its statement several times before asserting that it was “taking a position of neutrality” toward AI and maintained “that its ethical use must be advocated for.” The interim executive director Kilby Blades announced that the closure was due to “a six-year downward trend in participation,” which she called “a logical outcome…not a salacious tale of scandal.”