Some former clients of Small Press Distribution, which announced its closure in March, have inked new distribution deals with Independent Publishers Group (IPG) and Itasca Books, reports Publishers Weekly. Black Lawrence Press, Blackwater Press, Bull City Press, Chax Press, Grid Books, Marsh Hawk Press, Ronsdale Press (excluding Canada), Roof Books, and Sinister Wisdom have signed with IPG. Epiphany Magazine, IF SF Publishing, River River Books, Rescue Press, and Threadsuns Press have signed with Itasca.

Today.com interviews Sarah Jessica Parker about SJP Lit, the book imprint launched by the Sex and the City actress with Zando in 2022, and Alina Grabowski, whose debut novel, Women and Children First, was released by SJP Lit last week. “What I’m looking for is a singular voice, someone who feels confident enough to be themselves as a writer, to not feel that there are reference points that they need to draw on in order to feel safe, or to be a commercial success,” says Parker.

Smithsonian Magazine looks at the history of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which will reopen next month after a major renovation.

Looking ahead to summer, CNN investigates the origin story of the “beach read,” which it traces to the nineteenth century “summer read” marketed to “rich men, who could afford to engage in leisure travel and unwind with poetry and literature.”

In honor of Little Free Library week—which began May 12 and runs through May 18—ThriftBooks is partnering with Little Free Library, the nonprofit in Saint Paul that is behind the national effort to offer free books through small collections individuals and organizations store on front lawns or in other locations. The company will donate more than 10,000 books to Little Free Library as well as money to help create new Little Free Libraries nationwide, “including many new Impact Libraries, which focus on communities where books are scarce and needed the most.”

Is LGBTQ literature experiencing a “renaissance”? Novelists Christina Cooke and Marissa Higgins hash it out on Literary Hub.

The Guardian rounds up its picks for the best of the literary internet, from New Yorker critic Merve Emre’s podcast to bots on X (formerly Twitter) channeling Anaïs Nin and Virginia Woolf.

Publishers Weekly offers a status update on the nation’s most consequential lawsuits seeking to protect the freedom to read amid an unprecedented rise in efforts to ban books from school and public libraries.

A short story by Rod Serling, creator and host of the original TV show the Twilight Zone, has been published for the first time in the Strand, a magazine that releases previously unpublished work by classic authors and new fiction by contemporary best-selling writers. The story, based on Serling’s experience fighting in World War II, is called “First Squad, First Platoon,” and it “was discovered in a collection of Serling’s writings at the University of Wisconsin,” reports NPR.

On Literary Hub Brittany Allen critiques the “objectification of books,” citing as an example the rise of “super readers” who have made book consumption into a kind of sport. “What strikes me…is the profound incompatibility between the object of the book and the ethos of productivity,” Allen writes.

A spreadsheet that purports to identify authors’ political stances toward Israel has gone viral on social media. Beside each author name—including Emily St. John Mandel, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, and others—columns mark them as “Zionist” or not and provide reasoning for the designation. “Many responses accuse the spreadsheet of antisemitism, calling it a list of Jews and comparing it to Nazi lists; the majority of the authors listed are not Jewish. Others thanked the creator for doing research to guide their purchasing and reading,” writes the Forward.

The New York Times interviews Lauren Groff about her new bookstore in Florida, The Lynx.

In the Paris Review Palestinian author Adania Shibli reflects on the practice of book banning. Last year Shibli’s novel Minor Detail had received a major literary award in Germany, the ceremony for which was cancelled after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and criticism that the novel could be deemed anti-Semitic. “Writers often write fiction in order to leave behind the oppressiveness of the lived world. To force a link between fiction and the real is an act of violence against the imagination,” Shibli writes.

W. Ralph Eubanks has been named interim president of the Authors Guild, the nation’s largest professional organization that advocates on behalf of published writers. An essayist, journalist, professor, and public speaker, Eubanks succeeds Maya Shanbhag Lang, who resigned as president on Friday.

For Esquire, Jonathan Russell Clark considers “Why We Love Time Travel Stories” and reads into Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel, The Ministry of Time, and Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life,” among other titles, looking for answers.

Publishers Weekly reports on Freedom to Write for Palestine, an event held last night at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City that featured writers who withdrew from PEN America’s World Voices Festival and Literary Awards, both of which were canceled last month.

New Literary Project announced that Ben Fountain, whose most recent novel is Devil Makes Three (Flatiron, 2023), has won the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. The $50,000 prize is given annually to a midcareer author of fiction. Fountain was chosen from a shortlist that included Jamel Brinkley, Patricia Engel, Idra Novey, and Bennett Sims.

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.”