Sarah Wolberg

Shortlists for the Booker Prize and the Financial Times/Schroders Business Book of the Year are announced. Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias by John Lorinc has won the inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Global Cities Book Award. A new PEN America report finds a 33% jump in school book bans. Plus, Page to Screen and interviews with Aparna Nancherla, Jo Nesbø, Michael Wolff, and more.

A new Simon & Schuster program highlights the merits of books that have been subject to censorship and will provide resources for fighting book bans. The Academy of American Poets announces the winners of its annual poetry prizes. LeVar Burton will serve as the honorary chair of this year’s Banned Books Week. Amazon will require publishers on Kindle to disclose when any of their content is generated by artificial intelligence.

The National Book Awards announces its longlists for nonfiction and poetry. The Flow: Rivers, Waters and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer and The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole win the Wainwright Prize for nature writing. Plus, Page to Screen and interviews with Leila Aboulela, John Manuel Arias, Kate Atkinson, and more.

The National Book Awards longlist for translated literature is announced; the longlists for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will be announced later today and tomorrow. Finalists are announced for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQIA+ emerging writers and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Plus new title best sellers and interviews with David Diop, Franklin Foer, Zakiya Dalila Harris, London Hughes, Daphne Kalotay, Angie Kim, Marisa Meltzer, Maggie O’Farrell, and Sarah Ogilvie.

The Ned Kelly Award winners, celebrating the best in Australian crime writing, have been named. The winners of the Davitt Awards, recognizing the best crime and mystery books by Australian women, are announced. The same effort that promotes book bans is spurring some libraries to leave the ALA over its defense of books. Edith Grossman, eminent translator of Spanish literature by Cervantes and Gabriel García Márquez, dies at 87. Journalist and author Peter C. Newman, who chronicled Canada’s power brokers, has died at 94.

Reese Witherspoon chooses Nina Simon’s Mother-Daughter Murder Night as her latest book club pick. The winners of this year’s Anthony Awards, for outstanding mystery books, are announced. Winners are also out for the 2023 Dragon Awards, for SFF novels. The longlist has been announced for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize, honoring the best Canadian novel, graphic novel, or short story collection. SFF novelist Rich Larson wins the 2023 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

The finalists for the 2023 Kirkus Prizes are announced. The finalists for the 2022 Sidewise Award for alternate history are announced. NYT reports on YA novelist John Green’s involvement in ensuring access to books in Indiana libraries. 

Alice Winn wins 2023 Waterstones debut fiction prize for In Memoriam. The UK’s Ackerley Prize for Autobiography names its 2023 shortlist. SFF and horror novelist (and music composer and conductor) S.P. Somtow is honored by the Thai National Committee for Culture. 

A new PEN America report documents a surge in “educational intimidation” bills. Salon speaks with former NFLer Michael Oher about The Blind Side controversy and his new book, When Your Back’s Against the Wall: Fame, Football, and Lessons Learned Through a Lifetime of Adversity. Equipping Space Cadets: Primary Science Fiction for Young Children by Emily Midkiff wins the 2023 Science Fiction Research Association book award; the SFRA’s other awards are announced as well.