My fellow nonfiction writers: AI can be a helpful tool. If you rely on it for factual accuracy you are putting your reputation, your career, your very livelihood in peril. - The AI Humanist
“’The Serpent in the Grove’ was named as the winning entry for the Commonwealth Prize from the Caribbean on Saturday and published in Granta magazine. … Shortly (afterward), internet sleuths — and a few literary critics — seized upon the work and its author, Jamir Nazir, reportedly a 61-year-old from Trinidad with few publications to his name.” - The Guardian
“While piracy has long been an issue for the book business, the rapid rise of unauthorized audiobooks” — typically with vocally flat narration and unrelated visuals — “on YouTube, which publishers and authors believe are eroding sales for their books, poses a new challenge for the industry.” - The New York Times
The author of a nonfiction book about the effects of artificial intelligence on truth acknowledged on Monday that he had included numerous made-up or misattributed quotes concocted by A.I. - The New York Times
Taiwan Travelogue, written by Yáng Shuāng-zi and translated by Lin King, takes the form of a travel memoir by a (fictional) Japanese novelist on a culinary tour of occupied Taiwan in the 1930s, charting her complex relationship with her local interpreter. The novel won a U.S. National Book Award in 2024. - AP
“Ross Barkan, who is a contract writer for the magazine, … has been accused of plagiarism after publishing at least three stories with striking similarities to other published work.” - NPR
Calling out lawyers for requesting more than $320 million in legal fees when each author only expects a $3,000 payout, some objectors asked the court to delay approving the settlement until a more reasonable plaintiff compensation plan is constructed. - Ars Technica
Stacey Levine’s Mice 1961, published by a very small press in Oregon, is "a deeply weird book, a kind-of coming-of-age comedy with no easy takeaway, full of twangy dialogue that reads like an alien in a human suit going ‘hello fellow Earthlings.’” - LitHub
“Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript, the earliest one was from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries earlier than that. And so it attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early 9th century.” - Seattle Times (AP)
If you do look closely at the history, biography, memoir, and general-nonfiction honors, a noticeable pattern emerges. The picks typically share a particular quality. - The Atlantic
The Wellcome Collection is ceding ownership of more than 2,000 documents, dating from the 15th to 19th centuries, bought from a Jain temple in present-day Pakistan in 1919. Now deeming the purchase of the manuscripts “unethical,” the museum is turning them over to the UK-based Institute of Jainology. - The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!)
“Roots” is a multi-generational story following the descendants of a man sold into slavery in the United States. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a mini-series. There is a statue of Haley in East Knoxville. - WATE
“A once-stolen collection of letters written by the poet John Keats to his fiancée Fanny Brawne will be sold at Sotheby’s New York this June with an estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million. The group of eight letters … date from 1819 to 1820, a period when Keats was suffering from tuberculosis.” - Artnet
