Winning Streak

After a couple of tumultuous years, the PEN America Literary Awards made a lively return to Manhattan’s Town Hall last night, distributing some $350,000 in prizes to such authors as Nicholas Boggs, Edwidge Danticat, and Jamaica Kincaid. Penguin Press’s Ginny Smith Younce has been promoted to VP and editor-in-chief, following the death of president and editor-in-chief Ann Godoff in February. John Green will make his adult fiction debut with his first novel in nearly a decade, Hollywood, Ending, out in September from Dutton. And Globe Pequot is continuing its acquisition spree, underway since 2024, with the purchase of Linden Publishing. In other news, OpenAI raised a whopping $122 billion in its latest funding round, with the tech firm valued at $730 billion, per the New York Times. Meanwhile, Penguin Random House is suing OpenAI’s European subsidiary after finding that ChatGPT reproduced a popular German children’s book series, per the Guardian. On Substack, author Lincoln Michel draws a connection between the memoir scandals of yore and today’s AI-authorship debate, while critic Sam Leith argues that an AI reckoning is fast approaching the literary world. Novelist Mary H.K. Choi stops by the Throwing Fits podcast to share her thoughts on the publishing industry and modern reading habits. Jeopardy champion and owner of Seattle’s Phinney Books Tom Nissley tells the University of Washington, his alma mater, about reading his way to quiz-show victory. And book critic Ron Charles offers a tongue-in-cheek vision of publishing without the “inefficiencies of human taste.”