Since 1950 the National Book Foundation has awarded the National Book Award to authors such as Colson Whitehead, William Faulkner, Beverly Cleary, and Jesmyn Ward. The Foundation also runs several programs for readers and writers, including the BookUp after-school reading program. In March 2016 the Foundation hired Guernica publisher Lisa Lucas as executive director. We talked to Lucas about how she runs the Foundation day to day.

The Great Gatsby is overrated. It’s a good book! A great book! It’s just not the very best book ever, especially not the best book to teach teenagers about the power of literature. If it were, then teens wouldn’t celebrate the glamour that the book tries to deconstruct. But it’s stuck in the high school literary canon, along with Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men. And at this point it seems like the main reason it’s taught to every high schooler is because it was taught to all the teachers, and no one’s bothered to check if it’s still the best choice.

Jamia Wilson grew up reading books from the Feminist Press, so she’s proud to be the literary publisher’s executive director (the youngest person, and the first woman of colour, to lead the 47-year-old press). When she became director, Wilson was already an outspoken activist and writer whose work had appeared in the Feminist Press titles Slut and I Still Believe Anita Hill.

We talked to Wilson in print and on video about her work habits, her inspirations, and the concrete ways the Press fosters teamwork.

If you've ever wanted to have a deeper conversation with the printed page - or scan a library of literature for answers to your many questions - Google's Talk to Books tool is a fun little way to do just that. It isn't a Google search for books, but it does offer more conversational answers for your questions than a traditional search.

For the first time in twenty years, as the Atlantic points out, a whole year's worth of copyrighted works will enter the public domain in the U.S. on January 1, 2019. Under the terms of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, works first published in 1923 will enter the public domain, meaning anyone can re-publish them, or chop them up and use them in other projects, without asking permission or paying the old rights holders. You can record new versions of the musical compositions; you can show the movies for a profit; you can even remake them. Amazon can sell you the ebook and keep all the money, and Project Gutenberg can give you the ebook for free. The Atlantic has a short list; we have a longer one below.

The University of Florida Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature has a digital archive of 6000 children's books from the 19th and early 20th century, all free to read online. A redditor discovered the treasure and shared it it Reddit's Books community. Fans of history and children's literature will be delighted to click through the pages of titles such as Aesop's Fables, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Grimm's Fairy Tales - and share them with their kids.

Did you know it took J.R.R Tolkien approximately 16 years to write some obscure trilogy of novels called The Lord of the Rings? Clocking in at over 500,000 words, that's no real surprise. But how long do you think it took to write some of the other popular books in human history?

While 2016 still didn't bring the long awaited Winds Of Winter to bookstores, there were still plenty of great books released. But were any of them on Amazon's bestseller list? Here's what Australians were reading in 2016.

Book Marks is a new web site that gathers book reviews from critics and readers alike for you to browse all in one place. Books Marks was launched by Literary Hub, a site that's dedicated to a mix of book news, excerpts and original content and interviews.