One book was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Award. One topped a nationwide list for “Best Fiction for Young Adults.” Another has sold three million copies and been adapted into a popular Netflix series. All top the list for the titles most banned by Utah’s biggest school districts. As the push to remove…

Lists celebrating 20th century Black women writers sometimes miss a crucial figure in literary history. Novelist Ann Petry, an Old Saybrook, Connecticut, native born to a middle-class family on October 12, 1908, was a touchstone of Black literature in the post-World War II period. She was notably the first Black American woman writer to sell…

Yes, you can travel through reading. Sometimes, it’s fun to let reading inspire your travels. Around the world, there’s an array of museums dedicated to expanding authors’ worlds through real-world artifacts, contextual deep dives, and a pure dose of imagination. Whether you’re hoping to learn a bit more about your favorite piece of literature or…

Seven years ago, when Riley Lipschitz was finishing her medical residency and preparing to move back to her home state of Arkansas, finding a book club was high on her list of priorities. “When you’re an adult, it’s hard to build relationships,” she says. “And I knew out of the gate that I wanted to…

I was backpacking through India when I picked up The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Right from the start, the words electrified me: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas…

A 2012 headline in U.S. News and World Report asked, “Is It Time to Rate Young Adult Books for Mature Content?” According to the article, there was an increase in profanity in children’s books and sexual content in young adult novels. In fact, a survey that year revealed that 55% of the readers of young…

The challenges of cracking the European book market are a perennial source of discussion for Arabic publishers at the Frankfurt International Book Fair. The litany of issues are familiar, from a lack of quality translations and associated grants to the general indifference of European publishers to Arab authors unless your last name is, say, Mahfouz…

Guest post written by Guy’s Girl author Emma NoyesEmma Noyes told her mother she wanted to be an author when she was six. She grew up in a suburb outside Chicago and attended Harvard University, where she studied history & literature. She started her career at a beer company, but left because she wanted to…

The impact of AI on publishing was hotly debated at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV From low-quality computer-written books flooding the market to potential copyright violations, publishing is the latest industry to feel the threat from rapid developments in artificial intelligence. Since the launch last year of ChatGPT, an easy-to-use AI chatbot that…

When the National Book Awards are announced next month, most readers and publishers will focus their attention on the big two categories: fiction and nonfiction. If book awards were Oscars, those would be Best Picture and Best Director. But I’d like to talk about another group that’s worth checking out: the finalists for Young People’s…