Police violence, heritage and love: Forward poetry prizes reveal shortlists ‘made to last’

Native American poet Natalie Diaz among contenders for best collection award with Postcolonial Love Poem, alongside Pascale Petit and Caroline Bird

Angela Carter’s exploration of life in a female body taught me to be comfortable in my own

I was 15 and in the bottom set for most subjects at school. The Magic Toyshop changed everything, says author Evie Wyld

#Publishingpaidme: authors share advances to expose racial disparities

Fantasy author LL McKinney sets off trend for authors to reveal the amounts paid for their work, pointing to stark differences between ethnicities

Comedy Women in Print prize unveils mythbusting shortlist

Marian Keyes, chairing this year’s judges, says finalists ‘showcase different ways that women are funny’ and challenge belief that women can’t write comic fiction

Michael Rosen takes first steps as he recovers from Covid-19

Writer, poet and broadcaster spent 47 days in intensive care with the coronavirus

Jacqueline Wilson asks children to join Silly Squad this summer

Tracy Beaker author says theme for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge is reading for fun and asks young readers to pick books that make them happy

Donations to inclusive publishers’ appeal leap after George Floyd killing

Pandemic fundraiser for Knights Of and Jacaranda has seen donations of more than £100,000 in the past week

Anti-racist book sales surge in US and Britain after George Floyd killing

Books by authors including Reni Eddo-Lodge, Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are selling out on both sides of the Atlantic

My learning disability is a bit of me, but it doesn’t define me

Shaun Webster once faced abuse, but now has an MBE for helping others with a learning disability, he reveals in a new book

Isaac Newton proposed curing plague with toad vomit, unseen papers show

Notes made in the shadow of a devastating outbreak show the great scientist sketching out some distinctly queasy remedies

Watership Down author’s estate wins back all rights to classic novel

In a case at London’s high court, Richard Adams’ estate won a longstanding claim against Martin Rosen, director of the 1978 animation

As a 20-year-old student I didn’t laugh very much. Then I read Tristram Shandy

I was a rookie standup when I came across Laurence Sterne’s classic, and it changed my view of not just comedy, but life, says comedian and writer Liam Williams

No pubs, no kissing, no flying: how Covid-19 is forcing authors to change their novels

Never mind newly minted corona lockdown stories, authors are frantically rewriting existing projects to reflect a world turned upside down by the pandemic – or shelving them indefinitely

Lawyers’ poems deal with trials of delivering lockdown justice

Collection published written by and dedicated to those who have kept system going

Secret sacrifice: the agents who risked all behind Nazi lines

The men and women of the Special Operations Executive who lost their lives in occupied Europe are winning recognition on TV, in books and commemorative events