In the Millions Mexican novelist Nicolás Medina Mora offers a critique of Latin American literature as a category: “What I’m trying to say is that, if one thinks about it for a moment, it becomes clear that ‘Latin America’ does not exist as a material reality. Much like the utopia of transnational friendship envisioned by the Mexican architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the region exists only in the imagination—even if this imaginary existence (like those of God, race, and currency) makes it ‘real’ enough to alter the course of history and shape individual lives.” 

The Guardian profiles Argentinian author César Aira, reportedly a favorite to win the next Nobel Prize in Literature. “He has published more than one hundred novels, gives his work away, and his surrealist books have a massive cult following.”

Fast Company considers how efforts to ban books are ultimately backfiring on conservative activists, particularly those who target books that deal with race and racism: “Indeed, over the last five years, there has been a steady increase in books by and about people of color. And people are finding creative ways to make sure these books get out into the world.”

The winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced, including Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch for fiction, Cristina Rivera Garza’s Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice for memoir or autobiography, and Brandon Som’s Tripas for poetry.

Simon & Schuster has acquired the Netherlands’ largest book publisher, Veen Bosch & Keuning, reports Publishers Weekly. “The move marks the first major instance of a promised international expansion of S&S, which CEO Jonathan Karp alluded to last year following the acquisition of S&S by private equity firm KKR.”

University of Washington Magazine reflects on the legacy of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers fifty years after its first publication: “Aiiieeeee!  became a foundational text in Asian American Literature, and its editors were credited for both rescuing stories out of time and opening readers to a diversity of voices and experiences from the Asian American community.”

“Garden of Time,” the theme of this year’s annual Met Gala—set to take place this evening—apparently derives from the 1962 short story by English author J. G. Ballard, “The Garden of Time.” The BBC considers the “delicious irony” of the ultra-exclusive fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute alluding to a tale in which “the super-rich hide themselves in Arcadian splendour while the ‘great unwashed’ riot.”

The Asian American Literature Festival will return this September without the involvement of the Smithsonian Institution, which last year canceled it with little warning. “And instead of only being in Washington, D.C., the in-person and virtual events will be spread out nationwide,” reports ABC News.

Authors who withdrew from PEN America’s World Voices Festival and Literary Awards in protest of the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza will be reading at an event called Freedom to Write for Palestine in New York City on Tuesday. The event will also raise funds for We Are Not Numbers, “a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project in Gaza that provides the world with direct access to Palestinian narratives.”

On JSTOR Daily Matthew Wills explores the origin of the penguin in the logo of Penguin Random House, previously Penguin Books, which launched in 1935.

Copper Canyon Press today announced that Ryo Yamaguchi is its new publisher. Yamaguchi was previously the publicist of Copper Canyon, an independent poetry press based in Port Townsend, Washington. Michael Wiegers will assume the role of the press’s artistic director in addition to his current position as executive editor, which he will continue.

The detention and imprisonment of writers reached a five-year peak last year, with at least 339 writers jailed worldwide, according to PEN America’s 2023 Freedom to Write Index. “War and conflict had a significant impact on writers in 2023, as the crackdown on dissent in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and in Russia resulted in substantial increases in the number of jailed writers, placing both countries in the top 10 for the first time,” according to the report.

Bianca Stone has been named the new poet laureate of Vermont.

The Denver Post reports that this year’s Readers Take Denver, an annual festival for fans of romance literature held earlier this month, is being denounced by attendees as “disorganized and chaotic,” on par with the 2017 Fyre Festival that led to prison time for its organizer, Billy McFarland. Next year’s festival has been canceled as a result.

ABC News reports on how a recent wave of book-banning efforts has specifically targeted the Asian American community.

Publishers Weekly offers a dispatch from the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University event held in Denver last week, including ideas from a “roundtable [that] addressed alternatives—or creative tweaks—to traditional publishing models.”  

In light of the current unprecedented wave of book-banning efforts in the United States, the New York Times looks back at efforts that began fifty years ago to ban Robert Cormier’s 1974 novel, The Chocolate War.

The New York Times investigates the theft of 170 rare books by Russian classic authors worth more than $2.6 million from European libraries. “How Russian rare books came to be at the center of a possible multinational criminal conspiracy is a story of money and geopolitics as much as of crafty forgers and lackluster library security.”

A group of academics, including many poets and writers, have announced “an academic and cultural boycott of Columbia University and Barnard College” due to the university and college’s response to protestors demanding a divestment “from Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.” The list of signatories includes authors Jamel Brinkley, Alexandra Kleeman, Kiese Laymon, Claire Luchette, Solmaz Sharif, and others. The letter notes that “80% of educational facilities in Gaza have been partially or wholly destroyed, including every university, the Gaza Municipal Archive and hundreds of libraries, bookstores, and publishing houses.” 

Liese Mayer has been appointed as executive editor of Little, Brown. “Mayer was most recently editorial director of fiction at Bloomsbury US, where she acquired and edited such titles as Women Talking by Miriam Toews, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy, Girlhood by Melissa Febos, and Zorrie by Laird Hunt,” writes Publishers Weekly.