The Show Must Go On

Despite the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the institution, the Library of Congress is still gearing up for its annual National Book Festival, which is slated for tomorrow in Washington, D.C. FSG Books for Young Readers has found its next editorial director in Nancy Conescu, who most recently headed up the Australian children’s publisher Berbay Books. George Saunders will take home a lifetime achievement award at this year’s National Book Awards in November. Plus, we talked with DC executive editor Chris Conroy about the success of the comics publisher’s Absolute Universe. Knopf has reached an agreement with family members on a revised final draft of Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, after they publicly raised questions about the book’s release, reports AP. As authors continue their legal battle with Anthropic, which allegedly pirated thousands of books to train its large language model, the AI company has been valued at a staggering $183 billion, reports TechCrunch. World of Interiors profiles legendary bookseller Richard Axe, who has accumulated a boundary-breaking collection of rare and used books over his career. Public Books traces the evolution of the dark academia genre. On Substack, author Lincoln Michel muses on how book criticism might evolve to meet the challenges of the age of AI. In the Guardian, Rumaan Alam reflects on his adolescent fling with J.D. Salinger and his lasting love for Agatha Christie. And Patrick Hemingway, the last surviving child of Ernest, has died at 97.