Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into Israel.

An appearance at a NASA space celebration by lively literary and movie artist Vanna Bonta made fashion waves as she talked thermal fabrics and convertible footwear, urging fashion to look spaceward, not down its proverbial nose.

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2008 goes to Australian author Sonya Hartnett.

This year’s Nordic Council Literature prize has gone to Naja Marie Aidt from Denmark for her collection of short stories called ”baboon.”

Whether from a nostalgia for its existence as an imperial centre or as an escape from reality, the literary obsession of the Serbian capital grows with every passing season.

Denis Johnson won the National Book Award for a 600-page "Tree of Smoke" describing extremes of the Vietnam War and its consequences.

The Nov. 28 release of a 400-page book dedicated to Harry Potter is delayed while his lawyers try to have a lawsuit by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. dismissed.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer has died of renal failure at the age of 84. Mailer won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Armies of the Night in 1968 and The Executioner's Song in 1979.

The author of “Harry Potter” J.K.Rowling together with the maker of the film about the small wizard are trying to avert publishing the book version of a Web site about Harry Potter.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has written a new book, her first since the final best-seller about the boy wizard came out earlier this year, she told BBC radio.

Yves Bonnefoy, the best French poet, has received a prestigious Czech literary prize in Prague on Tuesday. An international jury that included prominent German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki and British publisher John Calder selected Bonnefoy in March to win the annual Franz Kafka Prize awarded by the Prague-based Franz Kafka Society.

JK Rowling, whose Harry Potter series made her the first billionaire author, says she is surprised at the fuss surrounding her announcement that the boy wizard's head teacher, Albus Dumbledore, was gay.