A devastating censorship ruling (This week in books)

The last few weeks! Books!

I’m back! Though I’m quite busy catching up, and extraordinarily jet-lagged. Today’s collection of links will be presented mainly in list format, but there are lots of good ones. Enjoy!

Appeals Court Reverses Ruling in Texas Book Ban Case – Nathalie op de Beeck, Publishers Weekly – An extremely disappointing ruling that could open the door to more governmental censorship, written in an infuriatingly glib tone.

Pulitzer Prizes: 2025 Winners List – The New York Times. For books:

James by Percival Everett – Fiction
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal and Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black – History
Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts – Biography
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls – Memoir or Autobiography
New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe – Poetry
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans – General Nonfiction

Did the Pulitzer Board just overrule the Jury to give Percival Everett the prize? – Drew Broussard, Lit Hub

‘Heart Lamp’ Wins 2025 International Booker Prize – Sam Spratford, Publishers Weekly

NEA Literary Grants Terminated, Staff Depart as Trump Proposes Eliminating the Agency – Sophia Stewart, Publishers Weekly

The Fyre Fest of BookTok – Taylor Lorenz, User Mag

writer cons – Leigh Stein, Attention Economy – A more sympathetic take on A Million Lives in Baltimore. It’s not easy launching reader-oriented conferences.

Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College – James D. Walsh, Intelligencer

The Rise of the Submission Industrial Complex – Benjamin Davis, Lit Hub

Agatha Christie, Who Died in 1976, Will See You in Class – Amelia Nierenberg, The New York TImes

Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go, 20 Years Later – Kazuo Ishiguro, Lit Hub

From Family Tradition to Global Self-Published Sensation: The 20-Year Journey of The Elf on the Shelf – Chanda A. Bell, Writers Digest

Can Literary Agents Change Literature? – Kate McKean, Agents and Books

Newspapers Are Recommending AI-Hallucinated Novels – Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft

At Least Two Newspapers Syndicated AI Garbage – Damon Beres and Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic

How Taylor Jenkins Reid Became a Publishing Powerhouse – Lucy Feldman, Time

Readers Annoyed When Fantasy Novel Accidentally Leaves AI Prompt in Published Version, Showing Request to Copy Another Writer’s Style – Victor Tangermann, Futurism

5 Reasons a Literary Agent Isn’t Going to Steal Your Story, Make Millions, and Cut You Out – Sarah Chauncey, Jane Friedman

Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times