He was one of several booksellers detained in 2015 after selling material critical of the political elite on China’s mainland. He fled to Taiwan – which is seen by Beijing as a renegade province that must be reunited – in 2019 for fear he would be sent back to China under Hong Kong’s proposed extradition bill. Taiwan’s authorities said at the time that the reopening of Lam’s Causeway Bay Books bookshop was a symbol of democracy and freedom on the island. Read more
The American City Where Almost Everyone Seems To Be Writing a Book
The chief reason for Iowa City’s bookish demeanor celebrates its 90th anniversary this year; in 1936, the town’s University of Iowa set up the first creative writing degree in the United States, after decades of nurturing creative writing talent as part of wider academic programs. Today, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is globally famous, with a roster of former faculty and alumni that reads like a who’s who of modern American letters — Kurt Vonnegut, Curtis Sittenfeld, Philip Roth, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, to name a few. The Pulitzers and National Book Awards for alumni continue to stack up and in 2008, the town was named America’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Read more
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‘Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep’ by Paul Tremblay
Whether he’s playing with traditional novelistic forms, holding conversations with characters across time, or pushing his stories to their bleakest and strangest possible conclusions (if they have concrete conclusions at all) Tremblay is a daring novelist, never playing it safe for his audience or himself. The author of A Head Full of Ghosts, Horror Movie, and more is always pushing for something in his fiction, digging into the core of an issue until he finds its bloody, beating heart. Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, Tremblay’s latest novel, is no different. From the title alone you might surmise certain things about the narrative, from its Philip K. Dick influence to its sci-fi-horror premise, and you’d be right. But Tremblay always pushes beyond those initial assumptions, and here we get not just a gripping sci-fi-horror showcase, but something much stranger and more profound: An exploration of what it means to be human, fragile bodies and all, in the age of AI. Read more
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‘Transcription’ by Ben Lerner Wins Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
American writer Ben Lerner has won this year’s Orwell prize for political fiction for Transcription, a novel exploring technology and memory. In nonfiction, the prize went to Karen Bartlett for The Escape from Kabul, which looks at Afghan women lawyers who came under threat after the fall of Kabul in 2021. Read more
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Saskatoon Author Meredith Hambrock Wins $25K Leacock Medal for Best Canadian Humour Writing
Meredith Hambrock’s novel, She’s A Lamb!, is the winner of the 2026 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. The $25,000 prize is one of the oldest of its kind, established in 1947 to support the growth of Canadian humour writing. Read more
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Maldives Barefoot Bookseller
Dream jobs are a rare find, but nothing quite beats the role of bookseller in the Maldives, specifically at Soneva Fushi, one of the world’s most sublime resorts. Read more
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‘Trash! A Garbageman’s Story’
“The garbageman is the Sisyphus of our consumer society, condemned to go from house to house picking up bags, swept along day after day in the never-ending flow of refuse we produce,” writes Montréal sanitation worker Pare-Poupart in his bewitching debut memoir … Enlightening, unpretentious, and gently political, Pare-Poupart’s fascinating account will help readers view their garbage in a whole new light. It’s a treasure. Read more
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Book of the Month Club Celebrates Their Centennial
This year is not only the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Book of the Month Club—it also marks a decade since chairman John Lippman relaunched the iconic service and rebranded it Book of the Month. When Lippman, whose background is in finance and music, acquired BOTM in late 2012 from parent company Bookspan, it was being buffeted by both the rise of online bookselling and the explosion of e-books. Lippman’s goal was clear: to create a new business that would appeal to readers who were increasingly buying books online. Even after the acquisition, Lippman wasn’t sure his plan would work. But now he’s happy to report to PW that BOTM has grown every year since the relaunch, and it currently has more than 400,000 members and around 60 employees. Read more
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‘The Frenzy’ by Joyce Carol Oates
This terrific collection from Oates includes nine sly and sinister stories of human behavior at its most unsavory. Read more
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Jane Yolen, Author of 450 Books Including ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’, Dies at 87
Yolen penned 40 novels, multiple book series, and hundreds of poems. She is known for her 1988 Holocaust novella, The Devil’s Arithmetic, which earned her a World Fantasy Award. Read more
