COVID cohort ponders sex, careers and relationships in quietly satiric prose

The “down time” referenced in the title of this smart, funny but fatally plotless American literary novel is the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also has a metaphorical meaning. Many of its characters — a group of over-educated, Eastern seaboard artsy liberals, all within shouting distance of middle-age — feel stalled in life.

COVID does not help matters. But a bigger problem, author Andrew Martin suggests, might be too many choices and too much over-thinking.

Down Time is Martin’s second novel. His 2018 debut, Early Work, turned critics’ heads with its witty depiction of a group of similarly over-educated liberals on the cusp of 30. The New York Times named it one of its five best novels that year.

Search for ‘Glorians’ in the natural world a lush literary mosaic

“Glorians” is an odd word — it came to Terry Tempest Williams in a dream.

Women’s plight in later years examined

Popular 1980s TV series The Golden Girls provided viewers with a model of supportive and affordable housing for a quartet of older women. Sophia, daughter Dorothy and her friends Rose and Blanche shared life’s ups and downs including physical, mental and sexual health issues.

Scott Griffin addresses backlash over poetry prize changes, seeks community input

TORONTO - A yearslong conflict in Canadian poetry — a quiet mutiny waged in Instagram comments and Substack posts — could soon be resolved by way of a survey and a town hall.

The scene's top benefactor, the publisher-philanthropist Scott Griffin, is re-evaluating a controversial change he announced in 2022 to the poetry prize that bears his name. As a result, he's launching a survey to gather feedback and a town hall where poets and poetry lovers can workshop a solution.

At issue is Griffin's decision to merge the two categories of the Griffin Poetry Prize, one for an international poet and one for a Canadian, previously each worth $65,000, into a single $130,000 pot. It made the award the largest of its kind, and came with other changes meant to bolster support specifically for homegrown poets, including a $10,000 prize for a Canadian's first book of poetry.

The backlash was swift and as loud as poets generally get, but it was also sustained. Early critics include Alicia Elliott and rob mclennan.  Last year was the first time no Canadians made the five-book short list for the prize. Then last month, when the 2026 long list was announced, Canadians were shut out there too.

On a New Kids on the Block cruise, Emma Straub found a way past grief

Emma Straub wrote her 2022 novel “This Time Tomorrow” — about a woman who is able to return to her 16th birthday and spend time with her father as a healthy young man — as her own father's health was declining. It was a love letter to the father-daughter bond. A few months later, her father, the novelist Peter Straub, died.

She was deep in grief when an advertisement for a New Kids on the Block fan cruise caught her attention. She ended up among the thousands of fans who set sail on a four-day cruise with the boy band on board. They performed intimate concerts and other events were organized for their supporters to mingle. Straub decided then and there it was perfect setting for her next book.

“For the first time, I had the whole idea,” said the author of “Modern Lovers,” “All Adults Here” and “The Vacationers.” “I knew it was a book. I could write it and I would have the time of my life doing it.”

The result was “American Fantasy,” released Tuesday. Her protagonist is Annie, a newly single empty-nester who agrees to embark on a fan cruise for a '90s boy band and ends up forming a connection with one of its members.

New discovery solves mystery of the location of Shakespeare’s London house

LONDON (AP) — Fans of William Shakespeare know that the great playwright came from Stratford-upon-Avon, the riverside English town where tourists still throng to see his childhood home.

But he made his name in London — though few traces of him remain in the British capital.

A newly discovered 17th-century map sheds new light on the Bard’s London life, pinpointing for the first time the exact location of the only home Shakespeare bought in the city, and where he may have worked on his final plays.

Shakespeare scholar Lucy Munro, who found the document, said that it supplies “extra bits of the jigsaw puzzle” of Shakespeare's life. And as with so many discoveries, it was partly due to luck.

Deep dive into Royal couture reflects social, political context throughout first half of 20th century

Once upon a time, British royals didn’t angst much about their raunchy misdeeds being headlined in the media. Any connection to questionable characters or inappropriate events was more likely dismissed, diminished or ignored by kowtowing newshounds. Publishers turning a blind eye to sketchy royal shenanigans was de rigueur, and everyone liked it that way.

Fast forward 80 years. Today, royal drama and sketchy miscues do the rounds on social media 24-7; it’s the sustenance that scandal-hungry consumers feast on and biographers happily cater to.

Case in point are two recent U.K. titles that became bestsellers weeks before a dustjacket even hit a bookstore: Tom Bower’s Betrayal: Power, Deceit & the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, and Andrew Lownie’s Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, a look at the pre-Epstein rise and smutty fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) and Sarah Ferguson.

Buried in the current nest of royal tell-alls is Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture, a serious, hefty book, recently launched with little fanfare and even less hype. And its author Justine Picardie isn’t nettled in the slightest about that.

Writing community rallies to relaunch book awards

A group of local authors and arts workers are behind the revival of the Manitoba Book Awards’ return.

On April 9, the group behind the scaled-back, revitalized literary awards — which had been dormant for two years — relaunched the awards website and issued a press release detailing the return of the prizes, six in all for the first year.

In 2023, a feasibility study concluded the awards, and the group administering the prizes, should be dissolved, and in August 2024 it was announced the awards would be shelved.

“The outcome of that review was that the previous model was no longer sustainable,” says author David A. Robertson, president of the new board of directors and winner of numerous Manitoba Book Awards.

Oprah Winfrey names Maria Semple’s ‘Go Gentle’ as her latest book club pick

NEW YORK (AP) — Maria Semple's “Go Gentle,” a comic novel about a Stoic philosopher and single mother in Manhattan who finds herself caught up in events that challenge her capacity for acceptance, is Oprah Winfrey's new book club pick.

“For all those who crave a good page turner, this is one wild ride of a story that carries equal parts wit and wisdom,” Winfrey said in a statement Tuesday. “I learned so much about Stoicism — I laughed out loud for real. And underneath the humor there was always something tender … a quiet truth about relationships, identity, and what it means to find peace with yourself.”

Semple, whose new book was published this week, is best known for such bestsellers as “Today Will Be Different” and “Where’d You Go, Bernadette.” Her interview with Winfrey was taped for the “Oprah Book Club Podcast,” which can be seen through Winfrey's YouTube channel.

“To authors, ‘to get the call’ means one thing: Oprah has phoned out of the blue and made you a book club pick,” Semple said in a statement. “Truth is, I should have been prepared, considering the countless hours I’d spent in fantasyland imagining it happening to me … before scolding myself that it was an honor bestowed on other, more serious writers. When, while tidying the kitchen, I heard her voice for the first time, I hit the ceiling in bewildered, grateful, joy. I’m still there.”

Late teen’s dealings with London’s criminal underworld unpacked in riveting, remarkable account

The latest page-turner from New York narrative non-fiction writer Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing, Empire of Pain) manages to do many things well.

London Falling is an expertly paced true-crime mystery, a vertiginous plunge into London’s criminal underworld, an infuriating exposé of a weak and incompetent justice system and a heartbreaking portrait of parental grief. It’s also an ode to old-school investigative journalism, and to the author’s ability to patiently unwind a tale that is truly stranger than fiction.

Keefe is a decorated New Yorker staff writer who is drawn to big topics and big personalities. He excels at reporting on crime and corruption, yet is also capable of great empathy and poignancy. His vivid world-building, eye for detail and irony and masterful grasp of structure make his books read like novels.

London Falling chronicles the death of Zac Brettler, a precocious 19-year-old from a loving, upper-middle-class home who, late one night in 2019, plunges to his death from the fifth-floor balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury residential tower located directly across the River Thames from MI6 headquarters, whose security cameras capture Zac’s anguished final moments.

PEN America launches a US safety program for authors facing harassment

NEW YORK (AP) — A coalition of publishers and literary agencies are teaming with PEN America on an initiative meant to counter a growing trend of harassment against members of the literary community.

PEN America, the century-old free expression organization, announced Friday that it was launching the U.S. Safety Program, which would provide safety training and other resources for authors amid a wave of censorship efforts around the country.

“We have heard from countless authors, illustrators, and translators who are under siege, fending off a steady stream of abuse and threats, online and at book events,” said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, co-chief executive officer of PEN America. “Through this new program, the literary and publishing community is stepping up together because writers should not be forced to choose between their safety and their voice.”

Viktorya Vilk, who directs PEN's digital safety efforts, told The Associated Press that she first noticed a rise in harassment against journalists a decade ago, around the time Donald Trump was first elected president, and has seen it spread to writers and educators over the past couple of years. Maia Kababe, Jon Evison and George Johnson are among the authors of censored works who have spoken out about being harassed and threatened and even physically assaulted.

Winnipeg-born author-illustrator wins Swedish prize

Canadian picture book author-illustrator Jon Klassen has won the 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, presented annually by the Swedish Arts Council and considered one of the richest literary prizes in the world.

The award — named after the late Swedish children’s author and is presented to “a person or organization for their outstanding contribution to children’s and young adult literature” — is worth five million Swedish krona, or about $749,000.

Klassen was born in Winnipeg, grew up in Niagara Falls, Ont., and now lives in Los Angeles and is the bestselling author/illustrator of I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, The Skull, The Rock From the Sky and others. He has previously won the Caldecott and Kate Greenaway medals, and in 2018 was appointed to the Order of Canada.

The Swedish-based administrators of the prize and organizers of Italy’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair announced Klassen as the winner of the prize on April 14. Klassen will receive the award from Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden at a ceremony in Stockholm on May 25.

Jon Klassen, Canadian writer and illustrator of ‘I Want My Hat Back,’ wins $750K Swedish prize

Jon Klassen, the Winnipeg-born children's book author and illustrator behind "I Want My Hat Back," has won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is worth nearly $750,000.

The award administered by the Swedish Arts Council is handed out annually to a person or organization for their contribution to children's and young adult literature.

Jurors praised Klassen's body of work as a "subtle, astute and humorous investigation into existential questions."

His books include the tale of a bear searching for his missing pointy red hat; "This Is Not My Hat," which follows a tiny fish wearing a bowler hat and the much bigger fish he stole it from; and "We Found a Hat," about two turtles who find a cowboy hat they both want.