Australian publisher Keeperton is expanding its commercial fiction programme with the appointment of Kate Roddy as Senior Acquisitions Editor on its U.S. team. Roddy, whose previous roles include Abrams and Sourcebooks, will focus on acquiring high-concept commercial fiction and developing new and emerging voices as Keeperton broadens beyond the romance publishing base established through its Arndell imprint.

Translator and academic Susan Pickford will publish Translating Books for Publication with Routledge on 8 September, offering a practical introduction to the business and professional realities of translating books for the publishing industry. The guide looks beyond literary fiction to nonfiction, academic and institutional publishing, with case studies and exercises aimed at translators and publishing professionals. Trinity College Dublin will mark the publication with a free online conversation with Pickford on the same day.

The Australian Political Book of the Year Award has announced its 2026 longlist, naming ten books examining Australian politics, public policy and political life. The selection includes works by Troy Bramston, Ed Coper, Virginia Haussegger, Niki Savva and others. The field will be narrowed to a shortlist on 17 September, with the winner announced on 28 October.

Penguin Random House India will not publish Sonia Gandhi’s forthcoming memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love in India after discussions with the author’s representatives ended in an unresolved editorial impasse. The publisher says it remained willing to publish the book and has denied suggestions that outside pressure influenced the decision. The memoir’s international publication through Alfred A. Knopf is still scheduled for November.

The Czech Ministry of Culture has approved support for 78 projects in the second 2026 round of its programme funding the publication of Czech literature in translation abroad. The scheme helps foreign publishers bring Czech writing to new readers and follows a first 2026 round that supported 134 projects.

UK publisher Flame Tree Publishing has acquired worldwide rights to three forthcoming books by African-Australian writer Eugen Bacon, extending an existing publishing partnership into 2028. The deal covers the murder-mystery novella Jintu, the Afro-irreal collection Betwixt, and Children of the Storm: Sauútiverse Stories, a new collection set in the Afrocentric speculative-fiction universe Bacon helped develop.

Torrey House Press has named Will Neville-Rehbehn as its new publisher, marking a leadership change at the Salt Lake City–based independent press. The house will continue its established focus on environmental nonfiction while expanding its acquisitions in place-based fiction and poetry, with particular attention to a wider range of voices from the American West. Cofounder Kirsten Johanna Allen will remain involved as editorial director.

The Independent Publishers Caucus is marking its tenth anniversary after a decade of building support networks for small and independent presses. Founded in 2016, the organization now represents more than 100 publishers and has expanded its work across booksellers, libraries, education, advocacy and industry collaboration. Earlier this year, it also launched the Independent Press Top 40, a weekly bestseller list highlighting titles from independent publishers sold through independent bookstores.

Allen & Unwin has acquired world rights to Now or Never: The Inside Story of How Albanese and Chalmers Are Changing Australia by journalists James Massola and Shane Wright. The nonfiction title examines the working relationship between Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. The deal was negotiated by Grace Heifetz of a4 Literary.

Simon & Schuster Australia imprint Summit Books has acquired ANZ rights to People Will Get Hurt By This, the debut novel by New Zealand writer and former journalist Katie Newton. The darkly comic novel explores motherhood, family expectations and the consequences of walking away from an expected life, and is scheduled for publication in 2027. The deal was negotiated by Sarah McKenzie Literary Management.

A group of U.S. textbook authors has filed a proposed class action against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that copyrighted textbooks were copied without permission for the training of large language models. Filed in federal court in New York, the complaint argues that AI-generated alternatives could erode the market for regularly updated educational texts and seeks damages and an order against further alleged infringement. The claims remain unproven allegations before the court.

Cambridge Dictionary’s Word Watcher is tracking a crop of emerging English terms shaped by changing travel habits. Among them are microcation for a very short break, chronocation for travel organised around one’s natural body clock, neurosurfing for wellness trips involving activities intended to shift mental states, and snackpacking for holidays centred on discovering local foods. The terms reflect how new travel trends are continuing to generate playful compounds and blends in contemporary English.

Italian poet Antonella Anedda’s Emerging from the Winter Sea, a bilingual selection of poetry and prose translated by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 25. Bringing together work from across Anedda’s career, the volume introduces English-language readers to poetry shaped by memory, war, landscape, art and the shifting possibilities of language. In a new Literary Hub essay, Wilde-Menozzi reflects on the challenge of preserving Anedda’s distinctive lexicon and perspective without smoothing them into more familiar English forms.

The 2026 Kirkus Prize has named eighteen finalists across Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature. The fiction shortlist brings together writers including Tayari Jones, Douglas Stuart and Colson Whitehead, alongside Brenda Navarro’s Eating Ashes, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell.

American novelist John Crowley, best known for Little, Big and the four-volume Ægypt sequence, has died aged 83. His fiction moved between fantasy, myth, history and literary speculation, earning him a distinctive place in modern American imaginative literature.

U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze is taking his Words Bridging Worlds project across the country, using readings, discussions and workshops to introduce audiences to poetry translated from other languages and encourage participants to try carrying poems into English themselves.

Philip Pullman, Maggie O’Farrell, Katherine Rundell, Elif Shafak and other writers have backed a campaign seeking business-rate relief for independent bookshops. A total of 234 booksellers signed the appeal, warning that rising costs could restrict investment and put some shops at risk of closure.

Secondhand booksellers across the UK and Ireland have reported unusual bulk orders for seemingly unrelated and often obscure books. Some sellers suspect the purchases may be feeding AI-training operations, particularly as similar buying patterns have appeared overseas and previously offline books have become valuable sources of fresh text.

Japan’s International Library of Children’s Literature will open a new exhibition examining how picture books create visual impact with deliberately restricted palettes. Drawing from the library’s collection, Picture Books with Limited Coloration will feature monochrome works and books using only a small number of colours. The exhibition runs from October 2026 to April 2027, with an entirely new selection of books introduced for its second period.

The Icelandic Literature Center is placing special emphasis on children’s and young adult books in its 2026 programme supporting translations of Icelandic literature abroad. Foreign publishers may apply for grants covering 70 percent of translation costs for children’s and YA titles, up to ISK 500,000, with partial support also available for printing illustrated children’s books. The current application round closes September 15.

Dutch book distributor CB (Centraal Boekhuis) has completed the migration of its digital distribution operation to Bookwire OS, moving a catalogue of about 80,000 ebooks and 25,000 audiobooks onto the German company’s technology platform. The partnership gives CB’s more than 500 publishing partners access to a wider international distribution network while allowing publishers to continue working through CB’s existing interface.

The German Book Prize 2026 has announced its longlist of 20 novels, selected by the jury from 205 titles published or forthcoming during the eligibility period. The field will be narrowed to six books on 8 September, before the winner is revealed on 5 October in Frankfurt. This year’s jury highlighted works ranging from fragmentary, experimental forms to expansive narratives, with multilingual experience emerging as a notable feature of the selection.

Frontline Fellowship will hold Translation Retreat 2026 at Duke University in November, bringing together translators, scholars, editors and publishers working to bring Chinese-language nonfiction into English. The four-day residential programme, a reimagined third season of its Non-Fiction Translation Fellowship, will combine workshops, mentorship and project development, with three participants receiving US$1,000 translation fellowships.

German writer Charlotte Gneuß’s award-winning debut novel Gittersee will reach English-language readers this autumn as Red Skies, translated by Lucy Jones and published by independent press Arboretum Books. Set in East Germany in 1976, the novel follows a sixteen-year-old drawn into the machinery of Stasi surveillance and was recognised with both the Aspekte Literature Prize and the Jürgen Ponto Foundation literary prize in 2023.

A new publishing initiative in Mozambique is aiming to build stronger links between local writers, publishers and readers and the international book trade. The Maputo International Book Fair will combine public literary programming with a professional programme focused on rights, pitching, training and publishing partnerships. Sandra Tamele, president of the Mozambican Publishers and Booksellers Association, says the project is intended not simply as another book fair, but as part of a broader effort to strengthen the infrastructure and professional networks needed for Mozambique’s book industry to grow.

South Korea has selected 774 titles for the 2026 Sejong Book Support Project, including 429 general-interest and 345 academic works. The books will be distributed to more than 2,000 libraries and cultural institutions, with this year’s programme also expanding into Korean-language schools, cultural centres and university libraries overseas.

Israel Joshua Singer’s dispatches from his 1932 journey through the United States have been collected in Italian for the first time as Viaggi in America, translated from Yiddish by Enrico Benella. Most of these observations of American life have never been translated into English, giving the collection an unusual linguistic journey back toward the country it describes.

Argentine writer Vlady Kociancich’s The Eighth Wonder has reached English readers in a translation by Jessica Sequeira. In a new essay, Sequeira explores how translation itself runs through the novel, including Kociancich’s own highly regarded Spanish translation of Joseph Conrad’s The End of the Tether.

An analysis of roughly 17 million loans from Prague’s Municipal Library has revealed striking patterns in the city’s reading habits. Women borrow almost three times as many books as men, while Diary of a Wimpy Kid emerged as the most borrowed title overall and Karin Lednická’s The Leaning Church led among adult readers.

Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library, translated from Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain, has won the 2026 Inside Literary Prize. Nearly 200 incarcerated readers across six U.S. states chose the dystopian novel, in which a government censor begins questioning the suppression of books and the stories he has been ordered to silence.

Mongolia’s Magic Box project has created 13 children’s libraries from insulated shipping containers — three in Ulaanbaatar and ten in rural areas. The small heated spaces give children places to read, study, work and play, bringing books and learning opportunities to communities with limited library access.

Samuel Beckett’s six notebooks from his 1936–37 journey through Germany are being published in full for the first time. The 1,352-page bilingual edition, due on 20 August, records his encounters with art, writers and everyday life in Nazi Germany while revealing the development of the literary voice that would later define his work.

The British Library’s Fairy Tales exhibition is approaching its final days, bringing together books, artwork, theatre costumes, puppets and interactive displays to explore how familiar tales have been told and retold across generations. It closes on 23 August.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’s August update adds thirteen new lives and seven revised entries, with a special focus on lexicographers — the people who documented, defined and preserved the record of English words.

U.S. publishing revenue reached an estimated $33.4 billion in 2025, up 2.5% from the previous year. Print formats still accounted for just over half of publishers’ revenue, while hardbacks, paperbacks, ebooks and digital audio all recorded growth.

OverDrive has acquired divibib, the company behind the Onleihe digital lending service used by libraries across German-speaking Europe. Onleihe libraries and readers will gradually move onto Libby, bringing the two major digital-library systems together.

The Cheltenham Literature Festival has unveiled its 2026 programme, with more than 500 events running from 9–18 October. Maggie O’Farrell, Elif Shafak, Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Osman and Ian Rankin are among the writers appearing.

A new study of Observatorio Lázaro, which has monitored lexical borrowings in the Spanish digital press since 2020, documents more than two million examples across 1.88 million articles. Most are anglicisms, offering a large-scale picture of English vocabulary in contemporary Spanish-language journalism.

The German Book Prize has selected 20 novels from 205 titles considered for its 2026 longlist. Six will advance to the shortlist on 8 September, with the winner announced at the prize ceremony in Frankfurt on 5 October.

Brazil’s National Library Foundation has launched its 2026 programme supporting the translation and publication of Brazilian authors abroad. Foreign publishers can apply for financial support to bring Brazilian works into new languages and markets.

Fiction occupied eight of Kyobo Book Centre’s ten bestselling positions in Korea during the first five months of 2026. Sales increased by 19.3% from the previous year, marking a second consecutive year of double-digit growth as readers returned to longer, more immersive stories.

Once treated as a specialist format, graphic novels and memoirs now appear across mainstream literary publishers’ lists. Their growing recognition reflects the medium’s ability to combine art and narrative in serious works of fiction, memoir and history.

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation has sent readers back to Homer—and the renewed interest has now moved beyond bookstores. At the San Francisco Public Library, hundreds of readers are waiting for Emily Wilson’s English translation, while weekly digital checkouts have risen sharply since the film’s premiere.

A fiercely contested publishing deal for Jerry Falade’s debut crime novel, Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body, has collapsed after his agents said they could no longer verify how the manuscript developed from beginning to end. Falade denies using artificial intelligence and argues that the suspicions reflect racial bias, leaving publishing with difficult questions about authorship, evidence, and trust.

Sir Christopher Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan-born Canadian-British businessman, writer, explorer and arts patron, has died aged 93. After making his fortune in publishing and finance, he devoted his later life to exploration, travel writing and supporting cultural institutions, including the National Portrait Gallery.

More than 800,000 children across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland will receive a special edition of Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures for Christmas. Organised with the National Literacy Trust as part of the UK’s National Year of Reading, the initiative aims to encourage reading for pleasure at the crucial transition between primary and secondary school.

The 90th World Library and Information Congress will bring library and information professionals to Busan from 10–13 August. Under the theme Libraries Powering Transformation, the gathering will consider access to knowledge, cultural heritage and the changing role of libraries worldwide.

France’s Ministry of the Economy has opened a public consultation on what should legally qualify as a book. The definition determines which publications receive the country’s reduced 5.5% VAT rate, raising new questions about audiobooks, digital works, hybrid products, and the changing boundaries of publishing.

British author Patrice Lawrence has become Waterstones Children’s Laureate for 2026–2028, succeeding Frank Cottrell-Boyce. The author of books including Orangeboy and Needle, she takes on the national role promoting children’s literature and encouraging young people to read.

Chile’s Translating Chile programme supports foreign publishers translating Chilean literature as the country prepares to become Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2027. The initiative aims to bring Chilean books to new languages, markets and readers.

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award’s Translation Grant is offering international publishers up to US$19,000 per title to translate, publish, and promote selected Arabic literary and children’s books. Since 2018, the programme has helped 54 works reach readers in other languages.

Classicists and translators Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn have examined how Christopher Nolan’s adaptation reshapes Homer’s Odyssey. Their comments explore what happens to character, language, and meaning when an ancient poem is transformed for modern cinema.

Jane Yolen, the prolific author of nearly 450 books spanning fantasy, folklore, poetry, and children’s literature, died on June 11 aged 87. Her final book, Monsters of Fife: Terror Birds, was published posthumously on July 14.

A new discussion inspired by Sophia Smith Galer’s How to Kill a Language examines the difference between languages gradually falling out of use and those deliberately suppressed. It argues that language preservation requires not only affection, but speakers, education, resources, and freedom.

British author Patrice Lawrence has been named Waterstones Children’s Laureate for 2026–2028. Her programme will focus on shared reading and on helping vulnerable or overlooked children find connection, belonging, and a voice through books.

The UK Parliament’s Education Committee has called for the 2026 National Year of Reading to become a longer national commitment. Its recommendations include a National Reading Guarantee and access to a library in every school, as Britain confronts a steep decline in children reading for pleasure.

US regulators are considering whether overseas telecom call-center workers should be required to speak “American Standard English.”In global business, clarity is rarely judged by grammar alone — accent, expectation, and power shape what gets understood.

Some analysts warn that AI systems still struggle with less-represented languages, limiting how effectively people can access digital services.It reveals something deeper: when language is not understood by technology, access itself can begin to disappear.

A novel was withdrawn by a major publisher after it was suspected of being largely written by AI, highlighting new concerns about authorship.

Thousands of authors published a blank book listing their names to protest against AI companies using books without permission.

Los Angeles Central Library has marked the centenary of its landmark building. Opened in 1926 and now home to nearly three million books, it remains an active centre for reading, language learning, education, citizenship support, and public life.

Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French creator of Persepolis, died on June 4 aged 56. Through graphic memoir, she brought childhood, revolution, exile, and cultural displacement to an international readership with unusual clarity and humanity.

Tamil poet, lyricist, and novelist R. Vairamuthu has received the 60th Jnanpith Award for 2025, one of India’s highest literary honours, recognising his contribution to Tamil literature.