Books for All

Amid the ongoing legal battles over book bans and federal defunding of arts organizations, we’ve brought back our Freedom to Read issue—though, as our editorial director Jonathan Segura notes, we wish we didn’t have to. Throughout the week, we’ll be exploring the many ways that newly empowered censorship campaigns are reshaping the book business, beginning with shining a much-deserved spotlight on 10 grassroots activists fighting for the right to read in their communities. Despite recent tumult at the nation’s oldest cultural institution, the Library of Congress has appointed Arthur Sze as the 25th U.S. Poet Laureate. Just before the latest deadline that could have banned TikTok in the U.S., the White House announced that it had made a preliminary agreement with China, which currently owns the social media app, to sell the company, NBC reports. DC Comics has canceled its new Red Hood series over author Gretchen Felker-Martin’s social media comments about Charlie Kirk’s death, reports CNN. The New York Times looks at the legal battle between Michael Crichton’s estate and the creators of The Pitt over whether the series is an ER spinoff, and profiles children’s book author Robert Munsch as he navigates the challenges of dementia. In a blog post for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware lays out the tenets of copyright for authors looking to protect their intellectual property. And paper engineer Gene Vosough and Fit for Life coauthor Marilyn Diamond have died at 59 and 81, respectively.