Korean retailers report strong sales for Light and Thread, featuring speeches, essays and poems by novelist
A book featuring Han Kang’s Nobel prize lecture sold 10,000 copies in its first day on sale online.
Light and Thread, which takes its title from Han’s December lecture, is her first book to be published in South Korea since she was announced as the winner of the Nobel prize in literature last October.
Continue reading...Complaints about the book focus on cartoon sex scenes, one of which has been described by critics as ‘pornographic’ and ‘paedophilic’
Gender Queer, a graphic novel on gender identity, has been reapproved for sale in Australia following a conservative campaign against the book forcing the Classification Review Board to reconsider its initial decision.
The federal court last year ordered the board to reassess its decision to give the Maia Kobabe memoir an unrestricted M classification, after rightwing activist Bernard Gaynor challenged the ruling.
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Continue reading...China again biggest jailer of writers in 2024, followed by Iran – with Israel in fifth place, says organisation’s annual report
Writers in the US are at growing risk amid a worldwide crackdown on free speech that has begun to spread to countries previously renowned for unfettered expression and openness, according to a leading writers’ advocacy group.
PEN America said it was concerned about an emerging threat from the Trump administration as it published its annual Freedom to Write index report, which showed that the number of writers jailed worldwide had jumped for the sixth year running to 375 in 2024, compared with 339 the year before.
Continue reading...Laurie Lee and Robert Graves among ‘English-speaking Quixotes’ in new book celebrating literary love for all things Spanish
Almost 200 years ago, the pioneering British travel writer Richard Ford offered an observation that has been happily ignored by the legions of authors who have traipsed in his dusty footsteps across Spain, toting notebooks, the odd violin or Bible, and, of course, their own particular prejudices.
“Nothing causes more pain to Spaniards”, Ford noted in his 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain, “than to see volume after volume written by foreigners about their country.”
Continue reading...A small Michigan community banded together to help a beloved local bookstore move its stock to a new storefront
Residents of all ages in a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books – one by one – to a new storefront about a block away.
The “book brigade” of about 300 people stood in two lines running along a sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books’ former location directly to the correct shelves in the new building, down the block and around the corner on Main Street.
Continue reading...‘Lord forgive me. I am quite shameless’, author playfully wrote in note weeks after horror novel published in 1897
He had just unleashed one of the most famed gothic horror books on the world, a blood-curdling classic that chilled readers and has inspired countless authors, film-makers and video game developers ever since.
But a rare note that Bram Stoker wrote only weeks after Dracula was published in 1897 gives a glimpse into the playful fun he must have had with the novel.
Continue reading...Prolific Canadian director also made one of the country’s first internationally successful films, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, starring Richard Dreyfuss
Ted Kotcheff, the prolific Canadian director of films including First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s, Wake in Fright and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, has died aged 94. His daughter Kate Kotcheff told the Canadian Press that he had died of heart failure on Thursday in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he lived. His son Thomas said: “He died of old age, peacefully, and surrounded by loved ones.”
In an amazingly varied career, Kotcheff’s work ranged from hardhitting TV plays and low-budget features in the UK, to hit Hollywood comedies and prestige-laden award-winners and cult films. Kate Kotcheff said: “He was an amazing storyteller. He was an incredible, larger than life character [and] he was a director who could turn his hand to anything.”
Continue reading...Library commission says state ‘in dire shape’ and has ‘had a reconsideration of everything with regard to’ Doge
The Mississippi library commission, which offers services such as specialized research assistance to libraries in the state, has ordered the deletion of two research collections: the race relations database and the gender studies database. The collections were stored in what’s called the Magnolia database, which is used by publicly funded schools, libraries, universities and state agencies in Mississippi.
The commission’s executive director, Hulen Bivins, confirmed the deletion to the Guardian, and said: “We may lose a lot of materials.”
Continue reading...Michelle de Kretser and journalist Amy McQuire among six authors in contention for $60,000 prize for women and non-binary writers
The Stella prize, Australia’s award for women and non-binary authors, has made history this year with a shortlist featuring only works by women of colour, for the first time since the award was established in 2013.
Announced on Tuesday morning, this year’s shortlist includes Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire’s essay collection, Black Witness (winner of the 2025 Victorian premier’s award for Indigenous writing), about the failures of mainstream media and power of Indigenous journalism; two-time Miles Franklin-winner Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice, a reckoning with fiction, memoir and colonialism; and playwright, poet and author Samah Sabawi’s family memoir, Cactus Pear For My Beloved, tracing her roots from British-occupied Palestine through to contemporary Queensland.
Continue reading...California cases over AI trainers’ use of work by writers including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Chabon transferred to consolidate with New York suits from John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen and more
Twelve US copyright cases against OpenAI and Microsoft have been consolidated in New York, despite most of the authors and news outlets suing the companies being opposed to centralisation.
A transfer order made by the US judicial panel on multidistrict litigation on Thursday said that centralisation will “allow a single judge to coordinate discovery, streamline pretrial proceedings, and eliminate inconsistent rulings”.
Continue reading...Critics say bans would hinder rights as proponents would impose their beliefs on others who don’t share their views
Rightwing groups around the US are pushing legislation that would place new limits on what books are allowed in school libraries in a move that critics decry as censorship often focused on LGBTQ+ issues or race or imposing conservative social values.
Caught up in the attempts at suppressing books are classics like The Color Purple and Slaughterhouse Five.
Continue reading...French president Emmanuel Macron has called for authorities to free the novelist who was convicted in Algeria for allegedly undermining the country’s territorial integrity
French president Emmanuel Macron has called on Algeria to free Boualem Sansal, after the French-Algerian novelist was on Thursday sentenced to five years in prison and fined for allegedly undermining Algeria’s territorial integrity.
Sansal was arrested on 16 November at Algiers airport on arrival from Paris, after saying in an interview with a far-right French media outlet Frontières that France unfairly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era.
Continue reading...Judge rules that law banning school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts had been applied unconstitutionally
A lawsuit brought by publishers and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult has led to a portion of a law banning Iowa school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts being halted.
On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the measure, writing that it had been applied unconstitutionally in many schools and that books of “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” had been caught up in it, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
Continue reading...Fiona Larkin’s poem uses Finnish grammar to explore her feelings about her son’s move from the UK to Brisbane
A poem inspired by the writer’s experience missing her son after he moved from the UK to Australia has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition.
Fiona Larkin’s poem, Absence has a grammar, was picked from nearly 22,000 entries.
Continue reading...Booksellers take stand against influence of conservative billionaire by limiting orders of his company’s books and placing them on lower shelves
A conservative Catholic billionaire and media owner is facing an independent bookshop rebellion in France over his influence in the publishing world.
Dozens of independent booksellers are trying to counter the growing influence of Vincent Bolloré, whose vast cultural empire includes television, radio, the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, and also, since 2023, the biggest book publishing and distribution conglomerate in France, Hachette Livre.
Continue reading...A hugely influential novelist and critic, Solstad won the Norwegian Critics prize three times, and his work was translated by Haruki Murakami
Dag Solstad, a towering figure of Norwegian letters admired by literary greats around the world, has died aged 83.
Known for prose combining existential despair, political subjects and a droll sense of humour, Solstad won the Norwegian critics prize for literature an unprecedented three times.
Continue reading...After the shock resignation of the festival’s chair, the Sydney writers’ festival unveils its starry 2025 program in ‘an incredibly polarised environment’
Over the past two years, programming a writers’ festival has become one of the most politically fraught undertakings in the Australian cultural sphere. Both Sydney and Melbourne writers’ festivals have seen board members resign over programming decisions, while Adelaide and Perth have fended off calls for the de-platforming of speakers on both sides of the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Literary events are traditionally lauded for their “restraint, reason and tolerance in the face of opposing views” – but writers’ festivals are now issuing safety tips and employing security as they navigate “the frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the traditional public square’s conventions”, the University of Melbourne journalism academic Denis Muller observed in the Conversation last year, after the resignation of the Melbourne writers’ festival’s deputy chair, Leslie Reti.
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Continue reading...French president concerned for health of Boualem Sansal who has gone on hunger strike over his imprisonment
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said he is concerned about the “arbitrary detention” and health of Boualem Sansal, days after the French-Algerian author began a hunger strike over his imprisonment in Algeria.
On Tuesday, Pen America issued a statement calling for the immediate release of 75-year-old Sansal, noting that “his hunger strike adds to grave concerns for his wellbeing”.
Continue reading...As research reveals children want to listen to books rather than read them, here are some of the best audiobooks to enjoy
The popularity of audiobooks among young children and teenagers is on the rise with National Literacy Trust research showing for the first time that young people enjoy listening to books more than they do reading them.
Here are some of the best audiobooks on offer for kids and teens according to authors, critics and experts.
Continue reading...More than 2,000 cultural figures challenge Whitehall’s eagerness ‘to wrap our lives’ work in attractive paper for automated competitors’
Original British art and creative skill is in peril thanks to the rise of AI and the government’s plans to loosen copyright rules, some of the UK’s leading cultural figures have said.
More than 2,000 people, including leading creative names such as Mark Haddon, Axel Scheffler, Benji Davies and Michael Rosen, have signed a letter published in the Observer today calling on the government to keep the legal safeguards that offer artists and writers the prospect of a sustainable income.
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