This week! Books! Big news this week as PEN America, Penguin Random House, and a group of authors have filed suit against the Escambia County School District for violating the equal protection clause in the Constitution by targeting disproportionately nonwhite and LGBTQ authors with book bans. This is a significant legal salvo in the midst […]
Jessica Faust
PEN America releases comprehensive survey on race in publishing (This week in books)
This week! Books! PEN America released a wide-ranging survey of over 60 publishing employees on the paltry state of diversification and cultural change within the publishing industry when it comes to race, exploring “a host of historically underexplored financial and institutional factors that feed into underrepresentation across the industry,” and pointing to publishers’ “persistent obstacles […]
How a book is made (This week in books)
This is one of those weeks when the news is distressing and other topics can seem a bit trivial in comparison. But books are still crucial, writing will keep playing an important role in whatever’s next, and your writing matters. So on to the links. The NY Times has a pretty fascinating look at how […]
The curious case of Sherlock Holmes (This week in books)
This week! Books! Sherlock Holmes is one of the most enduring and influential characters in literature, and he was inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s fascination with advances in science and how it might be applied to detective work. Then Doyle went and got super into spiritualism, much to the chagrin of his friend Harry Houdini. […]
‘The Last Cuentista’ wins the Newbery (This week in books)
This week! Books! The ALA Awards were handed out this week, and congrats to the winners! John Newbery Medal: The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera Randolph Caldecott Medal: Watercress – illustrated by Jason Chin and written by Andrea Wang Coretta Scott King illustrator and author awards: Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston […]
The curious case of the midsized publishers (This week in books)
This week! Books! Now that Workman has been acquired by Hachette and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has been acquired by HarperCollins, where have all the midsized book publishers gone? Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly surveys this dying breed and cites the difficulty of building a backlist, the capital needed to grow into midsized publisher, and ongoing […]
