Leading writers take up ‘darkness residencies’ for art project

Bernardine Evaristo, Max Porter and Raymond Antrobus rise to artist Sam Winston’s challenge in A Delicate Sight to submit to time in blackout

Lego, learning and laughter: how libraries are thriving in lockdown

UK libraries are at the heart of local communities as eborrowing soars, printers turn out PPE, and staff get creative online

Normal People delivers best week ever for BBC Three

Sally Rooney novel adaptation has received 16.2m iPlayer requests since 26 April launch

Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations

Covid-19’s impact on the arts world has led to countless films and concerts being scrapped or postponed and theatres and galleries closed. Here’s an updating list of what’s affected so far

‘Lulled and dumbfound’: lockdown version of Under Milk Wood released

Key workers and youth theatre create strikingly apposite film of Dylan Thomas’s work about hushed Welsh village

Roger Robinson’s poems of Trinidad and London win Ondaatje prize

A Portable Paradise is the second poetry collection to win £10,000 award for a book that conjures ‘the spirit of a place’

I thought my writing too shameful, too feminine, until I read Karl Ove Knausgård

The emotional power of his six-part epic My Struggle gave me permission to write to my strengths, says the writer Megan Nolan

Contemporary artistic works mark 75th anniversary of VE Day

Online exhibition of art, poetry and music explores themes around conflict and victory

‘The police force desperately needs more black, brown and gay recruits’

Kevin Maxwell was forced to quit the service after years of abuse. Now he has written a book chronicling his experiences

Publishers must act now to develop working-class writers, says report

Common People: Breaking the Glass Ceiling in UK Publishing uses experiences of 17 writers to lay out case for better representation

Stanley Johnson pushes for new release of his 40-year-old virus novel

Prime minister’s father denies being opportunistic during coronavirus outbreak

Fatcat developers created our housing crisis. Here’s how to stop them

Housebuilders, armed with foreign cash and backed by top lobbyists, keep property prices high. But author Bob Colenutt has brilliantly exposed the grip they have on Britain

Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘too intimate’ novel to be published after 75 years

Les Inséparables, which depicts the writer’s passionate friendship with a girl who later died, was withheld during her lifetime

Terry Pratchett novels to get ‘absolutely faithful’ TV adaptations

Discworld fantasy stories will be adapted for TV ‘in a form he would be proud of’ after BBC America’s controversial cyberpunk take on The Watch

Nick Hornby: BBC should be ‘untouchable’ after coronavirus

High Fidelity author writes fierce defence of broadcaster, praising work to help audience ‘live through and understand a crisis’