Bernardine Evaristo, the 2019 Booker Prize winner, selects six novels for Penguin UK’s “Black Britain: Writing Black” series. The new editions of books by Jacqueline Roy, S. I. Martin, C. L. R. James, Nicola Williams, Judith Bryan, and Mike Phillips will be published in February 2021.
At Jewish Currents, Jess Bergman writes about Susan Taubes and her novel Divorcing, which is based on Taubes’s own separation from her husband Jacob and is newly back in print from New York Review Books. In the novel, Bergman notes, the uncoupling happens early, and “the ongoingness implied by the title’s gerund form thus hints at the fact that Taubes’s subject is much larger than marriage. Ultimately, Divorcing is a compendium of severance: not just a wife from her husband, but a family from their homeland, and a people from their God.”
The BBC has released new social-media guidelines, which prohibit sharing opinions on controversial issues and criticizing colleagues, and advises against using emoticons.
Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris look at how Big 5 publishers are approaching diversity in acquisitions and on staff. Starting in January 2022, Hachette will release books “dedicated to social justice and focused on works by writers of color,” under Legacy Lit, a new imprint originally pitched this summer by executive editor Krishan Trotman, who will serve as its vice president and publisher. Simon & Schuster, helmed by Dana Canedy, is choosing to shut down 37 Ink, an imprint that has “focused on marginalized voices.” Said Canedy: “I want everyone publishing what would formerly have been thought of as 37 Ink books. Not to say we didn’t have books by and about people of color, but all of the books we acquire by and about people of color should be Simon & Schuster books.”
New York Times reporter Nikita Stewart has been promoted to assistant editor for the paper’s Metro section.
Tonight at Greenlight Bookstore, via Zoom, poets Anaïs Duplan and Kelly Schirmann will discuss their recent collections and their work with hybrid genre writing.