News of note for readers: October 15, 2026

Catch up quick with the bookish news of the past few days ... or take a deeper dive into each story. Your choice! 

• The Giver author Lois Lowry had to cancel a sold-out appearance after a malfunctioning revolving door sent her to the emergency room (People).

• Check out the cover — and inspiration — for Brit Bennett's next novel, The Last Diva, which comes out June 8 (People).

• Simbarashe Kundizeza denies that his short story "The Blue Fighter," which received this year's Caine Prize for African Writing, was written using AI; a journalist for The Atlantic made the accusation less than a week after the prize was awarded (The Guardian).

• Read an excerpt from the Booker Prize-nominated novel The End of Everything by M. John Harrison (Literary Hub).

• Here's how George M. Saunders's Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo — about grief and, specifically, the death of a child — became an opera (The Associated Press).