Authors Guild Awards: Hayden, Everett, Tan Stand Against Censorship

0:00It's April 21st. You're listening to entertainment and celebrity news today, AI-powered entertainment coverage. Nearly a year after President Donald Trump fired her as Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden picked up the Champion of Riders Award from the authors. Gilday, the 73-year-old, who served from 2016 to 2025 as the first woman and first black person in that role, got cheers. From hundreds at their gala in New York on Monday, in her speech, Hayden called libraries key bridges between writers and everyday folks, places where kids find their first books and communities. Connect through stories. She highlighted them as engines of inclusion and free speech, especially with bookbans hitting record levels and librarians facing pushback. The event honored two other big names too, Pulitzer-Winter Perseval Everett, 69, got the Baldacci Award for Activism, joking about it while. The link of a feature where libraries only stock conservative picks like Ein Rand.

1:00Amy Tan, 74, known for the Joy Luck Club, shared her Distinguished Service Award and a personal tale of how a traumatic childhood reading. Bond sparked her political view of writing. Riders there, including David Baldacci, slam AI companies for using their work without permission in lawsuits against outfits like Microsoft and OpenAI. The night stood as a rally against censorship and tech overreach in the literary world. All this shows the literary crew staying resilient, pushing back on threats to stories and ideas that shape us all.