Diversity

Denver bookstore The Tattered Cover drew considerable criticism online from authors and booksellers after it had posted a statement on June 6.While declaring, “We agree with, embrace, and believe that black lives matter,” the owners said, but their higher value was a “nearly 50-year policy of not engaging in public debate. Our value to the community is to provide a place where access to ideas, and the free exchange of ideas, can happen in an uninhibited way. It’s not for us to determine which ideas in the pages on our shelves are valid and which are not.” They said taking stands […]

Over the weekend, close to 1,500 people from across publishing houses, literary agencies and more added their names to a Statement of Solidarity from Workers Across Publishing, which had been posted as a public google document. Addressed to the ceos of the five largest trade publishers, a little over half of the signatories work for those companies. The statement committed to today as “a day of action in solidarity with the global uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and the many, many others in the long history of Black people murdered […]

That’s the assessment of AP reporter Hillel Italie, who attended the taping of the two-part filming of Oprah’s Book Club discussion of AMERICAN DIRT and the controversy around the book. The shows are available for streaming from Apple TV+ on Friday, March 6. “She turned the forum into a debate about the marginalization of Latino voices, the lack of diversity in publishing and the question of who is best suited to tell a given story.” The AP spoke to Winfrey after the taping and she said, “This has taken up a lot of my energy, a lot of her (Cummins’) […]