Aspen Words has announced the five finalists for the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize: Rabih Alameddine for The True, True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Grove Press), Sonora Jha for Intemperance (HarperVia), Charlotte McConaghy for Wild Dark Shore (Flatiron Books), Maria Reva for Endling (Doubleday), and Jess Walter for So Far Gone (Harper). Given annually for “an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture,” the prize confers a cash award of $35,000, one of the largest for fiction writing in the United States. Past winners include Mohsin Hamed, Tayari Jones, and Tommy Orange. This year’s winner will be revealed on April 23.

The iconic penguin logo of Penguin Random House has been liberated from its orange lozenge, set free to dance, slide, and waddle its way across the press’s marketing materials and other assets, Fast Company reports. After whimsical sketches of the bird made their way from Penguin’s archives into the brand’s 90th anniversary publicity campaign, the press was inspired to seize on readers’ affection for the penguin with a new series of illustrations. The resulting “Playful Penguins” depict the peguin at his cheekiest, and often beak-deep in a book. The original logo dates back to 1935, when press founder Allen Lane took a secretary’s advice that penguin would make “a good name to encapsulate a ‘dignified’ yet ‘flippant’ brand attitude.” Illustrator Edward Young took the logo assignment to the London Zoo, where the press’s logo hatched from a day of sketching, “capturing a mischievous energy that suggests a creature constantly in motion.”

In a keynote address to attendees of the London Book Fair, Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior argued that concerns about AI have led publishers to neglect a more urgent threat: the declining number of book readers. “AI changes how we work,” said Prior. “But the reading crisis changes whether we have a business at all.” Prior made the case that the shift in reader engagement “is neurological as much as cultural,” Publishers Weekly reports, describing “a generation rewired for the scroll over the page.” Prior called for literary advocacy “as relentless as the algorithms we are competing with,” and for following readers’ interests to make “the book as accessible, as urgent, and as socially relevant as the notification.”

The London Book Fair kicked off today at Olympia London, and Publishing Perspectives has compiled list of highlights drawn from the conference general program. The global publishing event brings together over thousands of publishers, literary agents, authors, and industry professionals whose primary focus is the sale and negotiation of international rights, distribution, and licensing of content across print, audio, and digital media. Erin Somers of Publishers Lunch reported on the first day of programming, which included an opening keynote from Pengruin Random House UK CEO Tom Weldon, who predicted that the war in the Middle East will lead to supply chain issues in the UK and the United States. “From an economic point of view, with the cost of oil going up dramatically that is going to put a lot of pressure on freight costs,” he said.

Book Riot unpacks the State Department’s recent decision to halt passport services at certain public libraries due to their status as a nonprofit/non-governmental organization. “In rural areas, these libraries may have acted as the primary passport agency for many people who would have otherwise had to drive long distances and take time off work to apply for a passport.”

Published in response to an AI industry “built on stolen work…taken without permission or payment,” approximately ten thousand authors, including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, have contributed to an “empty” book that will be distributed to attendees of the London Book Fair, the Guardian reports. The only contents in Don’t Steal This Book is a list of the author’s names. Next week the UK government “is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.”

Last week Amy Griffin, best-selling memoirist of The Tell (The Dial Press), was sued by a former classmate who accused the author of using her story of sexual abuse for her book, reports the New York Times. The lawsuit was filed in California almost one year following the publication of the book, stating, “‘The Tell’ constitutes neither a genuine nor harmless memoir.” Selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club last year, the memoir mentions detailed memories from childhood that Griffin claims to have recovered while under the influence of MDMA therapy.

Physical books and other print media are thriving in France, reports the Guardian. During a time of screen fatigue, “social media-addled attention spans,” the rise of generative AI, and general fear of a post-literate society, the French magazine-book scene includes 3,000 independent bookstores (a higher number than all of those in the United States, though France has one-fifth of the population) and 770 new kiosks. Paris-based journalist Lindsey Tramuta says, “Print is showing some strong signs of survival,” adding that the magazine is “an object of fascination—a collectible that carries a point of view….” 

Former Amazon executive Greg Greeley has been named the new CEO of Simon & Schuster, effective immediately, reports Publishers Lunch. At age sixty-two, Greeley is one of the first Big 5 CEOs from outside the literary industry. Richard Sarnoff, a company board chair, commented: “Greg Greeley is a talented and strategic leader with wide-ranging experience managing enterprises across physical and digital markets. His depth of expertise and avid love of books give us the confidence that he is the right CEO to take Simon & Schuster forward as it begins its next 100 years….” He is following Jonathan Karp, who served as CEO of Simon & Schuster for five years and will remain with the company as publisher of the new Simon Six imprint.

António Lobo Antunes, a giant of Portuguese literature and the author of more than thirty novels and other books, has died at the age of eighty-three, the New York Times reports. The author “charted Portugal’s halting emergence from the crippling dictatorship of Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar from 1932 to 1968, and its failed colonial wars in Africa. His career was studded with literary awards, including the Jerusalem Prize in 2005 and the Camões Prize, Portugal’s highest literary honor, in 2007.”

Publishers Lunch reports that thirteen publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster, together with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), have brought a lawsuit against Anna’s Archive, a website used by tech companies to source pirated books for training AI models. The suit alleges that the copyrights of more than 140 million texts have been violated by Anna’s Archive. “Anna’s Archive is a brazen pirate operation that steals and distributes millions of literary works while outrageously offering access to AI developers in exchange for crypto payments,” said Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of AAP, in a statement to the press. “To fight back, we must use all available tools and believe this action in U.S. court will make a difference. The unfortunate reality is that creators face a level of digital piracy today that is so staggering it is almost unbelievable—it is an affront to the public interest.”

Former Penguin Random House executive Brendan Cahill has announced the launch of new publisher Navigator Books, Publishers Weekly reports. The press will be based in Philadelphia and focus on history, memoir, biography, and historical fiction, publishing its first of three 2026 titles in July. The press plans to release six titles per year starting in 2027. “There are many talented established and emergent authors who are frustrated by today’s publishing landscape,” Cahill said in a statement. “Navigator Books is excited to join the new generation of innovative and dynamic author-centric independent book publishers seeking to transform the industry by addressing its legacy limitations.”

Ina Steiner reports on the end of Amazon’s book club program for EcommerceBytes. Last Friday, the technology company notified customers that it was winding down Amazon Book Clubs as of March 1 to “focus on other book discovery features for readers.” Steiner notes that “the Book Club feature had allowed members to use a widget to suggest books to fellow members and to endorse suggestions made by other members.” Amazon’s offered alternative to customers was exploring Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in 2013. 

The Gernert Company has joined forces with Bookcase Literary Agency to offer representation to authors of women’s commercial fiction, reports Publishers Weekly. Bookcase, a Los Angeles-based agency that represents romance authors such as Meghan Quinn and Anna Todd, is playing a central role in this partnership. Founder of the Gernert Company, David Gernert, states: “Today’s romance authors are entrepreneurial, global, and deeply and often directly connected to their readers. By partnering with Bookcase, we’re combining institutional reach with category-specific insight in a way that meaningfully serves this new generation of writers.” 

Wikipedia is now restricting certain contributors who were paid to implement AI in translating existing Wikipedia articles into other languages, as the editors discovered that these translations include “hallucinations,” reports 404 Media. These AI-generated errors have also led to new policies for the online encyclopedia, including the use of an independent AI model to peer review the current AI translations. 

For the New York Times Style Magazine, Elly Fishman considers the endeavor of visual artist Bethany Collins who for four months “woke up every day before dawn, brewed coffee, and sat down at her dining table to copy out Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick(1851) with a nib pen.” Collins was inspired by an earlier work by conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg, who in 1974 gave a similar treatment to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Immersing herself in Melville’s text, she found Moby-Dick to be rife with two-hundred-year-old anxieties that still echo today: The book warns ‘against following the lone madman who will take the whole ship down,’ she says, noting that Melville also points out the dangers of ‘overconsumption, the pursuit of oil, and an obsession with whiteness.’ As Americans, ‘all of those obsessions and pursuits are somehow uniquely ours,’ she says.”

Sixteen novels have been announced as the longlist for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, “with settings ranging from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata” and including nine titles from independent presses and seven debuts, the Guardian reports. The annual award confers a prize of £30,000 (approximately $40,100) to a work of fiction written in the English language by a woman. The titles comprising this year’s longlist are Gloria Don’t Speak (Weatherglass Books) by Lucy Apps, Paradiso 17 (4th Estate) by Hannah Lillith Assadi, Moderation (Atlantic Books) by Elaine Castillo, Flashlight (Jonathan Cape) by Susan Choi, Dominion (Europa Editions) by Addie E Citchens (Europa Editions), The Benefactors (Sceptre) by Wendy Erskine, The Correspondent (Michael Joseph) by Virginia Evans, The Mercy Step (Cassava Republic Press) by Marcia Hutchinson, The Others (Fly on the Wall Press) by Sheena Kalayil, Kingfisher (Saraband) by Rozie Kelly, Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate), Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press), A Guardian and a Thief (Scribner) by Megha Majumdar, Wild Dark Shore (Canongate) by Charlotte McConaghy, The Best of Everything (Tinder Press) by Kit de Waal, and A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing (Dead Ink) by Alice Evelyn Yang.

Writers are gathering in Baltimore as the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) kicks off the 2026 AWP Conference & Bookfair at the Baltimore Convention Center. BmoreArt expects that more than 10,000 writers, editors, and other literati will participate in the annual festivities, which include panels, readings, an exhibition hall with booths from presses and writing programs, offsite events, and a keynote address by screenwriter and director John Waters. The conference runs through today through March 7; visit Poets & Writers at booth #347 to meet staff, enjoy free copies of Poets & Writers Magazine, and more.

The Authors Guild has launched its Human Authored certification program, Publishers Lunch reports. For $10 per book (free to Authors Guild members), authors “can register to use the Human Authored certification mark to distinguish their human-written books from AI-generated books.” According to the program’s usage guidelines, “The certification mark may only be used in connection with literary works for which the text itself was fully authored by one or more human beings and not generated by AI, except for a de minimis amount (such as through the use of AI-powered spelling and grammar check applications). Use of generative AI to create a table of contents, indices, or other auxiliary parts of a book, or for researching, brainstorming, outlining, or any purposes other than generating text does not disqualify a work from being Human Authored.”

Steph Opitz has been named director of publishing services at Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, Publishers Weekly reports. Opitz, who has worked for Bookshop.org since 2022, most recently as director of bookstore partnerships, will succeed longtime Consortium president Julie Schaper, who in September announced her plans to retire.