Here are a few things that have recently caught our attention.

• Steven Kleinman’s Life Cycle of a Bear has won the 2019 Levine Prize for Poetry.
• The ALA's Rainbow Book List Committee has announced the 2020 Rainbow Book List, which is curated to highlight books with significant LGBTQ+ content aimed at children and youth ages 18 and under.
• Alice Mayhew, esteemed and admired editor at Simon & Schuster, has died at 87.
• Roberta George, an 80-year-old debut novelist, is drawing praise and criticism for her scandalous subject matter.
• S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack have won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, for their play Counting and Cracking.
• George Steiner, renowned literary critic, has died at age 90.
• The 2020 PEN America Literary Service Award has been presented to Patti Smith, a writer, performer, and visual artist whose work has been celebrated by Rolling Stone, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the National Book Foundation.
• From Jenny Offill and the New York Times: “How to Write Fiction When the Planet is Falling Apart.”
• Beloved poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite has died at age 89.

Photo Credit: University of Sussex / The Guardian