State of the Arts

In a move that will surprise exactly no one who has borne witness to President Trump’s first 100 days in office, the National Endowment for the Arts has cut grants for publishers and literary organizations across the country and laid off four literary arts staffers. The move comes alongside Trump’s budget proposal to eliminate the agency along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Plus, a new executive order seeks to end federal funding for NPR and PBS, reports Deadline. In other news, Globe Pequot is on an acquisition spree, making its third this year—and second in two weeks—with the purchase of the Denver-based Bower House. And four publishers from the U.S. and Mexico converged on Princeton University to discuss publishing in fraught political climates. File 770 details the controversy around the decision by the organizers of Seattle Worldcon 2025 to use ChatGPT to vet panelists. Relatedly, the Atlantic predicts how the advent of large language models could influence the way humans write, and the New York Times takes a closer look at a recent AI-penned book about the dangers of AI. The Times also explains how the fight over library books is dividing one Alabama city. Across the Atlantic, Thawra sizes up U.K. publishing’s diversity problem, while the Guardian highlights a new U.K.-based initiative aimed at supporting working-class writers. And for Literary Hub, Kazuo Ishiguro reflects on 20 years of Never Let Me Go.