Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia, is fighting for the right to send books to people in prison after a county sheriff’s office blocked its delivery of books to the Gwinnett County Jail last year. “Avid is now suing the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office for violating the store’s civil rights to free expression, with the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic and civil rights attorney Zack Greenamyre as counsel. If successful, this case would establish approved vendor policies like Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office as unconstitutional,” writes the Progressive Magazine.

In the Financial Times Nilanjana Roy contemplates the particular joys and insights to be found in reading the letters of prominent authors.

Literary critic Helen Vender—an influential scholar, thinker, and anthologist of poetry—has died at age ninety.

Public Books interviews novelist Francisco Goldman, who for the past thirty years “has produced a steady stream of ambitious, experimental works that resemble little else that has been published in the Anglophone world.” 

Town & Country offers a guide to the many literary references in Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department.

On Literary Hub the duo behind Street Books—a bicycle-powered mobile library in Portland, Oregon—reflect on their work supporting unhoused readers by delivering books, eyeglasses, and other supplies needed to engage with literature.

Can book bans be banned themselves? The Associated Press reports that lawmakers in several traditionally Democratic states have proposed laws that do just that. Often referred to as “Freedom to Read” acts, the laws would prohibit or limit the ability of activists to remove from libraries books they claim are inappropriate for children or otherwise problematic.

Vox reports on “garbage e-books” overtaking Amazon: “It’s partly AI, partly a get-rich-quick scheme, and entirely bad for confused consumers”—and legitimate authors and publishers whose books are getting lost in the shuffle.

The New York Times reports on the cancellation of the PEN America Literary Awards after many authors withdrew their books from consideration amid criticism of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza.

Today is World Book and Copyright Day. In 1995 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated April 23 as an annual date “to recognize the contributions of books and authors globally,” writes the Business Standard.

Two authors made Time’s 2024 list of the one hundred most influential people: Lauren Groff and James McBride.

PEN America has canceled its 2024 literary awards ceremony after many authors withdrew their books from consideration in protest of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza, Publishers Weekly reports. At the direction of the Literary Estate of Jean Stein, PEN America will donate the $75,000 prize for the PEN/Stein award to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Winners will not be named for an award if the winning title had been withdrawn; PEN America is considering how to allocate prize money for categories in which no winner will be announced.

Milton, West Virginia, is the hometown of cult fiction icon Breece D’J Pancake, who died in 1979 at age twenty-six. The West Virginia Explorer considers the literary pilgrims who travel to Milton each year to visit landmarks they associate with the writer, whose legacy is all but unacknowledged by the town.

Literary-themed vacations are apparently a “hot new trend.” Esquire investigates the custom cruises, special libraries, and resort-hosted book clubs that are luring well-heeled readers and writers around the globe.

The Los Angeles Times reports from the Los Angeles Festival of Books, one of the nation’s largest literary events hosted this past weekend at the University of Southern California.

Publishers Weekly speaks with newer bookstore owners who have entered the business “as a career and as a means to advance personal priorities. They’re stocking shelves with books from BIPOC, LGBTQ, and global perspectives, seeking out local and underrepresented authors, and creating spaces for historically marginalized customers.”

The Forward reports on the withdrawal of many authors from consideration for this year’s PEN America Literary Awards amid criticism of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza. Camille T. Dungy remains the only author nominated for the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award who has not withdrawn her book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, from consideration. In a statement she told the Forward that she supports PEN America for its work against book banning: “Such bans are putting young people at risk, particularly Black, Brown, queer, and trans youths who can’t access books that represent and affirm who they are and who they need and want to be.”

Lord Byron died on this date, April 19, in 1924 at age thirty-six. Trinity College of the University of Cambridge in England, Byron’s alma mater, is hosting a festival honoring the Romantic poet this weekend, and other bicentennial events honoring him are being held elsewhere in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere.

The New York Times investigates “a shadowy corner of the rare book world”: volumes bound with human skin.

In an open letter, PEN America’s president, author Jennifer Finney Boylan, addresses criticism of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza, saying “a working group of authors and scholars [will] review PEN’s work—not just over the last six months, but indeed, going back a decade, to ensure we are aligned with our mission, and to make recommendations about how we respond to future conflicts.”