News & Notes – 5/31/2025

May 31, 2025 Lark_Bookwyrm News & Notes 1

News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff.

NOTE on paywalls: Publisher’s Weekly and The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post have paywalls, but allow a small number of free articles per month.

Literary Losses

Peter Morwood, UK sci-fi and fantasy author, died unexpectedly on May 9, 2025, following a brief illness; he was 68. Morwood’s works include the Alban Saga, the Prince Ivan series, and the Clan Wars novels, as as a number of media tie-in novels, several of them co-authored with his wife, sci-fi and fantasy author Diane Duane. She announced his death on Tumblr and other social media.

My personal favorite of Duane and Morwood’s co-written works is The Romulan Way, which explores both the dangers of undercover espionage and the Romulan culture. Written before Star Trek: The Next Generation and published only a month or two before that series debuted, The Romulan Way (and Duane’s related Rihannsu novels) gave the Romulan Empire and its people a depth and richness of culture only hinted at in the original Star Trek series, and even a language. While TNG and subsequent shows took the Romulans in a different direction, Duane and Morwood’s Rihannsu (Romulans) became headcanon for me. I was deeply sorry to hear of Peter’s death, and my heart goes out to Diane and to their family and friends.

Obituaries and tributes: Locus. Bibliography and Biography: Goodreads; Wikipedia

Bookish News

The Trump administration fired the extremely well-qualified, black, female head of the Library of Congress. (AP) NPR’s story offers some background and context.
[Fired] US Copyright Office director sue[d] Trump administration over firing, but less than a week later, a Judge denie[d] US Copyright Office director’s request to halt her firing. (Reuters)
After IMLS Ruling in R.I., Defendants Hasten to Comply but Ask for a Stay (Publishers Weekly) The judge’s ruling “directed the federal government to reverse course on a presidential executive order targeting the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and two more federal agencies.” The government wants a stay while they appeal the decision.
James wins the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Literature, plus all the other 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners (NPR)
Philadephia Inquirer and Chicago Sun-Times Publish Summer Reading List of Nonexistent Books (SBTB blog) If I were one of the major authors whose nonexistent book was touted on this reading list, I would be very upset. Also, below Sarah’s excellent summary of the news & reporting on this story, there’s an opinion piece on why she distrusts mainstream media… and she has some excellent reasons. (As an intelligent, relatively well-informed liberal, I, too, have qualms about much of the news coverage these days.) The Chicago Sun-Times recently issued a lengthy explanation and apology: Lessons (and an apology) from the Sun-Times CEO on that AI-generated book list. I suspect she’s right about all the human errors that led to this debacle, but I’m uncomfortable with her stance on using AI responsibly going forward. As long as generative AI models are trained on pirated, copyrighted material and private data used without informed consent, there is no ethical way to use said gen-AI (not to mention the environmental concerns and gen-AI’s tendency to make stuff up.) Note that I’m not anti-AI across the board. There are other types of AI: narrower, more focused on specific tasks, or responding to specific situations, and those can be very helpful, whether it’s interpreting cancer screening images, spell-checking your document, or even offering to put an event in your email onto your calendar.
Penguin Random House (PRH) Cuts Ties with Diamond Comic Distributors. (Publishers Weekly)

Worth Reading/Viewing

The Big Idea: Could the English Language Die? (Guardian)
R.I.P. M.M.P.B: The Last Days of Paperback Books (Richard Curtis, Inside Agenting substack) Mass market paperbacks may soon be a thing of the past.
A Wonderfully Petulant Example of How Language Changes (John McWhorter, NYT)

Just for Fun

Owls in Towels is a website of, well, owls in towels! Wildlife rehabilitators wrap sick or injured birds in towels when treating them, so that the birds don’t injure themselves or the handler. The photos are just adorable.