Irish writers have been dropped from the exam curriculum in British schools in favour of writers from more diverse backgrounds. Poets Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland and playwright Brian Friel have been removed from both the GCSE and A-levels curriculums. - Irish Times
As a writer, the key is not so much assembling reams and reams of material, but finding the details that make a period or situation vivid for you and, eventually, for the reader – those few facts which make a sprawling and multi-faceted topic specific enough to relate to and empathise with. - The Conversation
Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch "joins an impressive wave of recent books by Trinidadian women writers, including Ingrid Persaud's Love After Love and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's When We Were Birds, which are helping redefine a literature once dominated by noisy men." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
When Caro was almost finished with “The Power Broker,” he got an agent, Lynn Nesbit, and she matched him up with Gottlieb. If there is any enmity between Caro and Gottlieb, it would seem to be a remnant of Caro’s pain at the amount of material Gottlieb cut from “The Power Broker.” - The New Yorker
Every year since 2014 a prominent writer to submit a manuscript, and the commissioning will continue until 2113. Then, a century after the project began, they will all finally be published. - BBC
"Early last year, the publishing industry noticed that books readers gushed about on TikTok were showing up on bestseller lists. ... A year later, #BookTok has become a powerful force in the world of books, helping to create some of the biggest sellers on the market." - The New York Times
"That is on top of the 2,500 closures since 2004 documented in earlier reports. The result is even more 'news deserts' in poorer and rural communities and a growing split between haves and have-nots in access to local news." - Poynter
She wrote poetry regularly, though she never published any of it. Sure, she was no Marianne Moore, but there's real thought and feeling in her verse. As her friend Norman Rosten put it, "She had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but she lacked the control." - The Paris Review
Perhaps the term “antiquarian,” which traditionally referred to old, valuable books, often first editions and manuscripts, now seems to me to apply to all books. Books, by definition, have become, if not antiquarian, antiquated in their material form. They have become artifacts. - The Smart Set
Stephen Marche: "The love story below is my attempt to develop an idealized love story out of all the love stories that I have admired. ... "Autotuned Love Story" certainly isn't mine. ... It's the love story of the machines interacting with all the love stories I have loved." - Literary Hub
More than half a dozen libraries and drag performers, from Saint John to Victoria, reported being inundated online and over the phone by homophobic slurs and, in some cases, threats of violence. - CBC
The English language evolves at such a pace that, for the OED lexicographers, the goalposts aren’t so much shifting as sprinting away from them. - New Statesman
Novelist Taymour Soomro: "It was important to me to write about queerness in Pakistan for so many reasons, including making visible experiences like my own in Pakistan, and challenging reductive narratives ... about Muslim barbarism and homophobia." - The Guardian (UK)
"The questions that make these biographies sing—what makes this group of people actually interesting, not just noteworthy? Why, of all the relationships in a life, were these so particularly influential?—take real searching to answer." - The Atlantic