United States

Literature

Kevin Young Wins the World's Richest Poetry Prize. Now, Does Anyone Care?

Kevin Young's Night Watch has won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize, the world's richest poetry award at C$130,000. It is a formally demanding, blues-inflected collection — one that deserves readers who do not need a prize to find it.

Literature

'Roots' Returns to Knox County Schools — But the Fight Isn't Over

A Tennessee school district reversed its ban on Alex Haley's classic just weeks after removing it. What this decision reveals about American literary censorship.

News

Rachel Maddow's New Book Arrives One Week After the Midterms

Rachel Maddow turns her archival eye to the US Department of Justice in Department of Fate, due from Crown on November 10, 2026 — one week after the midterm elections.

Literature

On the Students Who Would Not Let Their Libraries Be Emptied

In Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, high school students have organised against school library defunding and book bans. One carried a sign that read: 'I cannot let these doctrines be the face of my education.' It is difficult to read that without feeling something very old stirring.

Reviews

Librarians Are Running for Office. Maybe They Should Have Done It Sooner.

Across the United States, library professionals are running for state political offices, motivated by book ban records. When shelves get emptied, someone has to change who decides what goes on them.

News

Arthur Sze Reappointed Poet Laureate: Poetry as a Bridge Between Worlds

There is a kind of poet who does not write from a center, but from the space between places. Arthur Sze's second term as U.S. Poet Laureate carries his lifelong project of bridging languages and cultures.

Literature

133 Organizations Against a Ghost: HR 7661 and the Silence of Libraries

A coalition of 133 publishers, bookstores, and libraries opposes HR 7661, the federal bill threatening to impose nationwide book censorship in American schools.

News

Tucker Carlson Wants to Be a Publisher Now

Tucker Carlson Books launches with Skyhorse Publishing, promising to platform voices that would 'in many cases be censored.' A publishing vision built on grievance — which is, at least, not new.