With another year before the European Parliament’s elections (from 6 to 9 June 2024; EU citizens will elect their 705 MEPs) and an additional 6 months before the appointment of the new College (the 27 Commissioners, one from each Member States), the EU institutions are wrapping up legislations, starting with a plan to address no less than Artificial Intelligence, among other topics.
The second edition of WEXFO opened under a warm, blue Lillehammer sky on 22 May. Its ambitious programme was spread across 4 days and made up of 4 different events with the addition of a parallel WEXFO Youth programme.
On Friday, June 2, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Penguin Random House, Candlewick Press, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Scholastic Inc., and Simon & Schuster filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, patrons of the Llano County Library System in Llano County, Texas, in the case of Little v. Llano County, a suit that challenges the actions taken by members of the Llano County Commissioners Court, members of the Llano County Library Board, and the Llano County Library System Director, to remove 17 books from the shelves of the public library system.
Iraqi publisher Mazin Lateef Ali, abducted in January 2020, awarded the 2023 International Publishers Association’s Prix Voltaire laureate at the award ceremony at the World Expression Forum in Lillehammer, Norway. The IPA also announced a Prix Voltaire Special Award for murdered Ukrainian children’s book author and poet, Volodymyr Vakulenko.
Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee spoke to Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association (UK) about their Inclusivity Action Plan and their past work on diversity and inclusion.
I write this post while returning home from a board meeting of the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) and the celebration of the Marrakesh Treaty’s 10th anniversary at the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, in Geneva.