The American Booksellers Association has made American Booksellers for Free Expression a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a move that will make some donations to ABFE tax-deductible and make ABFE eligible to receive grants. It will also allow ABFE "to expand our public-facing resources, offer webinars for broader audiences, grow our social media presence, and participate in more public events," all while continuing its work supporting and informing booksellers about free expression issues, the ABA said. 

"Establishing ABFE as a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit is an exciting opportunity for ABA to expand its free expression work to meet this crucial moment--a time when the right to read, free expression, and diversity in literature and bookselling are under attack in the United States," Allison Hill, CEO of ABA and chair of the ABFE board, said. "We look forward to offering education to a broader community of readers and citizens about the importance of diverse books and access to books, the value of reading and authors, and readers' rights."

Founding ABFE board members include Hill; Philomena Polefrone, associate director of ABFE; Ray Daniels, chief communications officer; and Dave Grogan, director of ABFE, advocacy & public policy.

Other board members are:

Maggie Tokuda-Hall, the children's and young adult book author and former independent bookseller. She is a founding member of Authors Against Book Bans and is just concluding her term there as board president.

David Horowitz, a longtime champion of First Amendment rights, who has been executive director of the Media Coalition since 1998.

In part, the change in ABFE status marks a return to its old structure standing technically separate from the ABA. Founded by the ABA in 1990 as the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, in 2015 the group was absorbed into the ABA and dropped the word "foundation" from its name.

M. Judson Booksellers, Greenville, S.C., held a grand opening for its new store in Fountain Inn, S.C., on Saturday, June 13, GoFountainInn.com reported.

Located at 109 N. Main St., the Fountain Inn store is a little less than half the size of the original Greenville store, at 2,200 square feet, but features a similar atmosphere and carries a similar product mix. The Fountain Inn store will start hosting events in the weeks to come, and the team plans to sell beer, wine, and pastries.

"There's a lot of energy here," owner June Wilcox said. "The community is really strong, vibrant, and you can feel the momentum that is happening. We really wanted to be a part of it and give it a try."

Earlier this spring, when M. Judson Booksellers announced it would open a second location, Wilcox told WYFF: "For years and years, we have talked about the possibility of expanding what we do here in downtown Greenville to other communities that we love, and recently, we decided that we would like to open a shop in Fountain Inn. It's a community that is ready for its own bookstore and its own reflection of how wonderful it is."

Wilcox told GoFountainInn.com that there was a line outside the store prior to the grand opening, and the community response has been great. "All of this process has just been so exciting and fun," she said. "There's been a real outpouring of community support and support from the city. We just could not have imagined the support that would show up."

Love & Lore Bookstore will host a grand opening celebration next month at 115 North Main St. in Huntington, Utah. Owner Shaylee Allred told KOAL News: "I loved reading when I was a kid. I got back into it a few years ago, and I feel like the community needs more books and reading. I kind of just jumped into it. I wanted this building forever, and when I saw it was for rent, I just did it. I had no plan, but I started it. I found a few friends online that have bookstores as well in Utah, and they were very kind and helpful."

Love & Lore owner Shaylee Allred

Allred has more than 11,500 followers for her Instagram account, bookedwithshay, and has hosted two romance novel conventions, Romance Out West and Romance Out East.

Considering some of the challenges she has faced as she prepares to open the bookstore, Allred noted: "It's such a niche thing in a small area, but I do think reading has become a huge thing. Ever since Covid, I have a lot of friends that read. I have a book club, and I just think it's something our community needs and can lean more into."

The bookshop's walls are lined with 23 floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and Allred aims to offer something for everyone: "I'm basically going to bring everything and anything. I plan on having traditional authors and a lot of Indie authors. I have a lot of Utah local authors that I'll have stocked in here as well, but I plan to have everything for everybody in the community from children's books to young adult, middle age, historical fiction, romance, contemporary fantasy, everything."

Reflecting on her path to opening Love & Lore, she said, "I think the most gratifying thing for me so far is that I've had a few high school-age kids and middle-aged kids stop me on the street because they know I'm opening the bookstore, and that's around the age I started reading, and to see them love it. Just kind of fuels my heart, so it's all worth it." She hopes to be ready for a grand opening by July 11.

In advance of its bricks-and-mortar opening in St. Petersburg, Fla., this summer, Pages & Perks Bookstore & More has opened a pop-up location inside the Cordova Inn, Patch reported.

Located at 253 2nd Ave. N. in downtown St. Petersburg, the pop-up can be found in the hotel's lobby, next to the coffee shop and bar. Pages & Perks carries a curated selection of general-interest titles for all ages.

"The great part is that people can shop any time there's someone at the front desk of the hotel which is 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. any day of the week," Pages and Perks co-owner Kate Johnson told Patch. "[Cordova owner] Alex Hodges knew we were ready to go and offered up the space in their library as the first permanent home of Pages and Perks."

The bookstore's main location will be a 1,600-square-foot space at 914 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. South. In addition to books, it will serve desserts, mocktails, beer, and wine, and events will be a major part of its offerings. Initially, Kate and Ben Johnson planned to have the bricks-and-mortar open in June, but due to ongoing construction, the opening has been delayed to August.

In the meantime, Pages & Perks will have a presence at the Cordova Inn and will be popping up throughout St. Petersburg at other events and markets. Kate Johnson noted that they hope to stay open in the Cordova Inn even after the main store opens.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has named Ann Patchett, bestselling author and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn., as this year's recipient of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, presented to a writer whose body of work reflects the prize's mission of fostering peace, social justice, and global understanding.

Ann Patchett

The foundation noted that its "recognition of Patchett's legacy honors not only her unshakable commitment to the written word as a force for connection and understanding, but for her relentless advocacy for independent bookshops and literary culture--especially in schools--has helped shape global conversations.

Nicholas A. Raines, executive director of the foundation, commented: "Ann Patchett has spent her career reminding us that literature is a necessity--it is the very medium through which we understand one another. Her novels return, again and again, to the questions that animate this prize: How do we build community across difference? How do we forgive? How do we repair what has been broken? At a moment when those questions feel more urgent than ever, honoring Ann Patchett with the Holbrooke Award is an act of faith in the power of storytelling to encourage empathy, foster human connection, and lead us toward a more humane world."

Upon learning the news, Patchett said, "If you wait to find a way to bring peace to the world there's a good chance that nothing will be accomplished. Instead, I recommend bringing about peace in any small way that is available to you. Live as peacefully and as generously as possible. Invite others to stand with you or, better yet, go and stand with them. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize reminds us of what is possible. I am honored to be a part of this legacy."

The foundation also released fiction and nonfiction shortlists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which honors writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace. The winners, who will be named in September, each receive $10,000; with the first runners-up getting $5,000. See the complete shortlists here.

Robert Thurman, "whose erudite, exuberant efforts to expand the West's understanding of Tibetan Buddhism earned him a reputation as 'the Dalai Lama's man in America,' " died June 16, the New York Times reported. He was 84. A former Buddhist monk who had been ordained and partly trained by the Dalai Lama, Thurman later earned a doctorate in Indic studies from Harvard and taught at Amherst and Columbia.

He wrote, edited, and translated more than 20 books on Buddhism, including centuries-old texts intended for scholars and advanced practitioners as well as titles like Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness (1998), which were written for the broader public and sold well.

His other books include a translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1994), Essential Tibetan Buddhism (1995), The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism (2005), Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well (2004), Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World (2008), and Love Your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit & Be a Whole Lot Happier (with Sharon Salzberg, 2013) 

With the rise of interest in Eastern philosophy and religion during the 1970s counterculture movement, Thurman pushed for a historically grounded, intellectually rigorous understanding of the tradition, the Times wrote.

"His translations went to the depths of the sophistication of the Tibetan exploration of consciousness," said David Kittay, a former student of Thurman at Columbia who now teaches religion there. "Yet he could explain it so anyone could get it."

Thurman "brought an infectious energy to the many lectures and conferences he organized around Buddhism and the plight of Tibet under Chinese rule," the Times noted, adding that people were often surprised by how sociable he was, given his years as a monk.

"I don't think he considered those to be contradictions," said Rodger Kamenetz, an expert on Buddhist-Jewish relations and author of Seeing Into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter. "He viewed meditation not as quietism, but as a release of energy, and he just had great energy."

In 1972, Thurman founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia, which translates and preserves classical Indian Buddhist texts. In 1987, at the Dalai Lama's request, he and his wife, Nena--along with actor Richard Gere and composer Philip Glass--founded Tibet House U.S., where Thurman later served for decades as president. He and his wife also operated the Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa, located near Woodstock, N.Y.

His daughter, the actress Uma Thurman, said, "My father was a magnificent, charismatic, passionate, curious, alive, vibrant human being. He never stopped investigating the world in all its facets. He was obsessed with the power of compassion."

In the early 1960s, Thurman decided to become a monk and persuaded his teacher to accompany him to Dharamshala, India, the home in exile of the Dalai Lama. The Times noted that Thurman and the Dalai Lama "became fast friends: He studied under the Tibetan spiritual leader and, in turn, gave him lessons in Freudian psychology, nuclear physics and other Western ideas." Although he was ordained, when Thurman returned to the U.S, he was persuaded that he could better serve Buddhism by becoming a professor.

"Buddhism is not primarily religious," he told The Believer magazine in 2020. "It deteriorates if someone believes they will get to nirvana if they just worship the Buddha. But the Buddha was saying, 'Worshipping me is not going to get you there; you have to do something.' "

Ingram hosted a bookseller dinner for author John Kenney (I See You've Called in Dead, Zibby Publishing), after his packed event at Mrs. Dalloway's in Berkeley, Calif. Pictured: (from left) Lise Solomon, Bay Area rep; Jessica Green, Mrs Dalloway's; Anna Bullard, Bookshop West Portal; (back) Ty Wilson, Bay Area rep, and Leslie Jobson, Ingram sales; Eric Green, Mrs. Dalloway's; author John Kenney; Elise Cannon, sales; Luisa Smith, Book Passage; Michael Barnard, Rakestraw Books; Pat Rudebusch, Orinda Books.

On Wednesday, the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City posted on Instagram: "Expecting 1 million people a block away from the store tomorrow for the Knicks parade. Hope some of them are mystery fans...."

Yesterday the bookshop shared a video of the crowds gathering for the celebration, noting: "Bit of an unusual walk into work this morning. Warren Street appears to be totally blocked off but hopefully open later?"

"If you talk to me while I'm reading my book and I'm mean to you, well, that's on you, man... you've been warned." That was the cautionary message on the sidewalk chalkboard in front of Highland Books in Brevard, N.C., which noted: "Happy reading book friends!"

"Lake time = book time," the Book Cabin in Lake George, N.Y., posted on Facebook. 

Today:
Fresh Air: Justene Hill Edwards, author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of Freedman's Bank (W.W. Norton, $19.99, 9781324123484).

MCC Theater in New York City revealed the lineup for its 40th anniversary season, including the world premiere of a musical adaptation What's Eating Gilbert Grape, featuring a book by Peter Hedges (About a Boy), adapting his own 1991 novel, Playbill reported. 

Music and lyrics are from Adrian Enscoe, Christopher Sears, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn. Directed by Obie Award winner and Tony Award nominee Anne Kauffman (Mary Jane), What's Eating Gilbert Grape is produced in association with Matt Ross, Dede Harris, and Linda Rubin. Specific dates for the run at the Newman Mills Theater will be announced eventually. 

"It's exciting and energizing to celebrate our 40th year with a season of collaborators both new and old, with works that are filled with heart, wit, bravery, and humor," said co-artistic director Will Cantler. "Peter Hedges is one of our longest collaborators and friends, developing the novel What's Eating Gilbert Grape in a series of chapter readings at MCC in 1989. How fitting to come full circle."

Warner Bros. has acquired Alisha Fernandez Miranda's 2023 memoir My What If Year, which America Ferrera will produce as a film. Deadline reported that Heidi Schreck (What the Constitution Means to Me) is writing the screenplay, with Connor DeSha exec producing via his and Ferrera's Take Fountain banner. Fernandez Miranda will be associate producer.

My What If Year "chronicles Miranda's bold decision, on the cusp of turning 40, to step away from her demanding career and spend a year as an unpaid intern in industries she had always dreamed about but never pursued. Even amidst the Covid pandemic, Miranda hopped between countries to explore the worlds of Broadway theatre, the London art scene, Scottish luxury hotels, and online fitness," Deadline noted.

Waterstones has revealed its 2026 Debut Fiction Prize shortlist, which is voted for by the company's booksellers. The winner will be named on July 16. This year's shortlisted titles are: 

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han
Under Water by Tara Menon
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia
The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski

Bea Carvalho, Waterstones head of books, said, "This is a shortlist which showcases writing of tremendous energy, poetic precision, and spry humor, balancing nostalgia with innovation to stunning effect. There is pure magic and electricity in these pages."

Meryl Branch-McTiernan is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. She co-wrote and produced the comedy feature Katie's Mom, which won the Audience Award for Fusion Features at the 2023 Dances with Films Festival. Her short fiction has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail and the Southampton Review. She received her B.S. in Television, Radio, and Film from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook University, where she has taught undergraduates. Her debut novel is What You Should Worry About (Akashic Books, June 2, 2026), in which 37-year-old Layla Moody navigates the Covid-19 pandemic while finding family on her own terms.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

If you're wondering what your party girl neighbor did during the pandemic while you were washing your groceries and homeschooling your kids, read my book.

On your nightstand now:

Rapidly expiring condoms, gummies to fix all the problems I have and don't have, half-empty glasses of water and moisturizer, a necklace tree in the shape of an '80s glam goddess, and Robert Lopez's story collection Asunder. There's a line in there, "Every time I brush my teeth or shave it's a bloodbath." When I see the book, I'm reminded what sentences can do, and to buy some floss.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I was a Pippi Longstocking girlie. I read all of Astrid Lindgren's books, stuck hangers in red-sprayed braids for Halloween, and hid soda cans in a stump to emulate Pippi's lemonade tree. I watched all the TV series and movies, especially the dubbed ones. My grandmother thought the books might be making me strange. I'm pretty sure I was already going that way, and Pippi confirmed it would be all right.

Book you've faked reading:

During the pandemic, I was so bored I picked up Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. It was a lot more entertaining than I expected. Nobody talks about all the parties in that book. I put it down as soon as people started hanging out with me again, but I still enjoy telling people I'm a Tolstoy fan.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I read Fear of Flying by Erica Jong when I was on the verge of turning 30 and believe it's essential material for anyone struggling to interrogate the balance between artistic, relational, and familial desires. While the novel is hailed for its frank sexuality, it asks big questions such as "can women screw like men or do emotions always get in the way? And how much of our desires are preprogrammed?" These questions have been revisited throughout the decades since the novel's release and we have yet to answer them.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I was transfixed by the cover of Luke Goebel's recent novel, Kill Dick. I lived in Hollywood for five years and his cover captures that cotton-candy sunset I was always chasing at the end of a day of trying to figure out what to do with my life. The playfulness of the purple and the yellow font mask the city's sinister undertones.

Book you hid from your parents:

My parents were free-speech evangelists. No need to hide books. But also, I broke my door off slamming it in eighth grade and didn't get a new one for a year, so it was difficult to hide anything.

Book that changed your life:

During my senior year of college, a high school friend gave me Jennifer Belle's Going Down. A few years later, a bookseller in Greenwich Village pushed her second novel, High Maintenance, on me. When I saw she was teaching a novel writing class at the New School, it felt serendipitous. Besides being drawn to her funny, voicey narrators, she made me believe I could write a novel if I started in the middle, with no outline, just a character, not unlike myself, embarking on tiny adventures. Her approach demystified the writing process for me.

Favorite line from a book:

I struggle with favorites, but Amy Hempel has so many incredible lines. I'll give you this one: "I want to know everything about you. So I tell you everything about myself." It's from her story "Tumble Home."

Five books you'll never part with:

I can't seem to part with any books. Ask my cleaning lady. She thinks I should be institutionalized for my hoarding of dirty stoop books.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I love Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman so much that I named my protagonist's avoidant ex-boyfriend after him. That was the first of the Zuckerman books I'd read, and I was shocked by the secret revealed.

Top three books from the 2020s:

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, and All Fours by Miranda July. The narrators in these three books were so compellingly flawed as they waged war against societal expectations.

Books that shaped your worldview:

John Irving's The Cider House Rules solidified my stance on reproductive freedom. Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities helped me understand power and class. Percival Everett's Erasure boldly tackles the nuances of race. And William Styron's Sophie's Choice shaped my views on trauma.

Most surprising trend in your reading life:

I had a big Mafia book phase in early high school, as most freshman girls on Long Island do. I think it started with Nelson DeMille's The Gold Coast and culminated in The Godfather by Mario Puzo. I'm not sure if I was more interested in being a mob wife or a mobster, but I probably would have been quickly whacked in either role.

Your top five authors:

Aside from all the authors I've previously mentioned, who are all favorites, I'd like to call out Judy Blume, Eve Babitz, Sigrid Nunez, Tom Perrotta, and Lorrie Moore. I know when I open one of their books, I will be greeted with humor and an irresistible narrator.

Homecomings, especially long-delayed ones, can be hard. Unresolved emotions and buried secrets sometimes bubble to the surface when the wanderer finally returns. That subject alone would be fitting for the sort of story that's distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Russo's long career. But with Under the Falls, he's connected that theme to an engrossing mystery. The result is a novel that's reminiscent of the work of writers such as Richard Price and Dennis Lehane, who've blended character-driven fiction with the crime genre.

In Nobody's Fool and its companions in his North Bath Trilogy, Russo (Life and Art) has created vivid portraits of struggling working-class towns in upstate New York. With Stone Mountain, "a place that doesn't yield many good outcomes," he returns to that familiar territory. Popular singer-songwriter Tyler Sinclair reluctantly is heading back to his hometown, 18 years after he left without a word to family or friends.

Before embarking on a lengthy tour, he's there to perform a benefit concert for his childhood friend Doc, paralyzed as a teenager in an accident while diving into the Falls with Tyler's help and now stripped of his Medicaid benefits. But the concert descends into chaos during its final number when the audience learns that Doc has died suddenly that evening. Afterward, the limo carrying Tyler is forced off a country road into a ravine by another vehicle. That crash sets the mystery plot into motion.

As the singer slowly recovers from his extensive injuries, his continued presence increases the pressure on Curt--the town's chief of police and another childhood friend of Tyler's who witnessed Doc's diving accident--to unravel the suspicious circumstances of the crash. These events also revive Curt's memories of Tyler's youthful attraction to his wife, Freddi, drawing the net that surrounds these characters ever tighter and forcing a moral reckoning for the man left behind when his best friend fled and achieved celebrity. Russo is attentive to the machinations of this plot while maintaining his focus on his characters' internal struggles. Chapters alternate mostly between the perspectives of Tyler, Curt, and Deb, a young Stone Mountain police officer who's torn between her loyalty to the chief and her fears that something is seriously amiss in his life.

Despite the occasional implausibility--such as why outside law enforcement personnel doesn't arrive to reinforce Stone Mountain's tiny police department in investigating a serious injury to a prominent entertainer--Russo successfully manages the novel's plot twists to maintain the balance between a character-driven story and the tropes of traditional crime novels. Under the Falls will please his longtime readers and undoubtedly attract some new ones. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Richard Russo marries a story of memories and secrets in a small upstate New York town to a mystery surrounding a catastrophic accident involving a musician who returns there after a long absence.