TODAY: In 1667, John Milton sells the copyright to Paradise Lost for only 10 pounds, is promptly expelled from paradise.   “What if life really was a story? What if you could alter the plot? Assign meaning to the most brutal contempt?” Read from Dorothy Allison’s acceptance speech for Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement....

Following months of escalating protests over its response to Israel’s war on Gaza, and just four days on from the cancelation of its annual literary awards, embattled free expression organization PEN America has now also announced the cancelation of its World Voices Festival. According to a press release published on the organization’s website in the...

Shaimaa Alareer, an accomplished Palestinian illustrator and the eldest daughter of the murdered poet Refaat Alareer, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on her home in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City earlier today. The attack also claimed the lives of her husband, Mohammed Siyam, an engineer, and their infant son, Abdul Rahman. Up until his...

As students organize and resist to demand action and justice for Palestinians, publishers are offering free books on Palestine, protest, and more, in solidarity. Verso has seven ebooks available for download, including a case for sanctions against Israel, a collection on 2011’s Occupy movement, and a compendium of revolt and resistance. Verso also...

It’s the moooost wonderfullll tiiiiime of the yeaaaar! That’s right, folks: tomorrow is perhaps the greatest book-related holiday on the calendar: Independent Bookstore Day! As I’ve been saying at the top of bookstore events at my local indie (where I moonlight as the events manager), every day can/should be Independent Bookstore Day if you’re a...

TODAY: In 1564, playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.   “I yearned for a bigger life and was sure it would come for me.” Aaron Hicklin on how the novels of Lynne Reid Banks helped him see himself. | Lit Hub Memoir “The more pertinent question than what we can write is what we who are Black authors can write...