Ella Creamer

Described as a ‘masterclass in tragicomedy’, the novel, set in Syracuse in 412BC, follows two locals who decide to stage Medea in a quarry using prisoners as actors

Hisham Matar, Sarah Perry and Samantha Harvey in running for prize, along with the first Native American and Dutch authors ever to be nominated

A crowdfunded campaign will send more than 400 copies of John Pring’s The Department to parliament, which looks at the role of the DWP in the deaths of disabled people

The pontiff argues it is dangerous to write off literature as ‘a minor art’ as it offers an antidote to our ‘obsession with screens’ and nurtures human sympathy

Appeal for donations to repair fire damage caused to Spellow Hub library has raised more than £120,000 in two days

The Pulitzer prize-shortlisted novelist behind books including There There and Wandering Stars will pen a manuscript that won’t be published until 2114

After sponsor Baillie Gifford ended its support, book festivals urgently need new models to survive financially

Index on Censorship said 53% of librarians polled had been asked to remove books – and that in more than half of those cases books were taken off shelves

Around 2,000 jobs were cut, and the most deprived areas were four times more likely to lose a library than the richest, according to a BBC report

Books by Richard Flanagan, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Rachel Cockerell and Jonathan Blitzer also in running for £50,000 nonfiction award