Thousands of authors feature in a new “empty” book titled “Don’t Steal This Book” – a protest over AI firms using creative professionals’ work without their permission.

“The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies,” reads the back cover of a new book being distributed at this year’s London Book Fair.

‘Don’t Steal This Book’: Authors protest AI at London Book Fair with ‘empty’ book

SIR Michael Morpurgo, former Children’s Laureate and author of acclaimed children’s novel ‘War Horse’, will be returning among a number of top authors speaking at the fifth Dulverton Exmoor Literary Festival later this year.

The festival, from Friday to Monday, November 13 to 16, will also feature an interview with Sir Michael’s wife Clare, daughter of the founder of Penguin Books and who runs the charity Farms for City Children.

Other guest speakers include Emily Howes, the award-winning author of ‘The Painter’s Daughters’.

Line-up of top authors taking shape for Dulverton and Exmoor Literary Festival, wsfp.co.uk

A new children’s book series, set against the backdrop of Wolverhampton’s Chapel Ash area, has been launched by a local author.

Satnam Rakhra’s The Kids from Chapel Ash is a series of 11 books about growing up in Wolverhampton.

Rakhra said he rarely saw himself reflected in the books he read as a child in school.

“The characters rarely looked like me, lived where I lived, or came from families like mine,” he said, “I wanted today’s children to have something different.”

‘Seeing your own community in a story matters’, BBC

Helen Garner, Melissa Lucashenko and Zadie Smith are among the more than 40 writers to have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers Week in the last 24 hours.

Some 90 participants, including key national and international guests such as Helen Garner, Toni Jordan, Trent Dalton, Melissa Lucashenko and Zadie Smith, have withdrawn in protest from Adelaide Writers Week, a core program of the 2026 Adelaide Festival, after the Festival Board’s decision yesterday [8 January] to remove award-winning Palestinian-Australian author and academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the Writers Week program.

Adelaide Writers Week in disarray as almost 100 writers boycott over Board’s ‘censorship’ of Randa Abdel-Fattah, artshub.com.au

Sophie Kinsella, author of the bestselling Shopaholic series of novels, has been remembered as a “wonderful, warm woman” following her death at the age of 55.

Author Sophie Kinsella remembered as a ‘wonderful, warm woman’, BBC News