On Friday, the Associated Press changed its style guide to capitalize the “b” in “Black” in cases in which that word refers to people in a “racial, ethnic or cultural context, weighing in on a hotly debated issue.”
The Washington Post is creating newsroom positions that will focus on race. The new roles will include a managing editor for diversity and inclusion, “a senior leadership position with responsibilities such as convening regular coverage discussions focused on race and identity and the identification and recruitment of candidates.”
After facing financial setbacks that almost led to permanent closure, City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco has reopened for in-store business.
James Hannaham, author of God Says No and Delicious Foods, has sold a book, Pilot Impostor, to Soft Skull Press. Pilot Impostor is, says Hannaham, “a multigenre book of responses to poems by Fernando Pessoa and his heteronyms,” and “explores the connections between pretending and privilege, and the ways in which identity is like a plane crash.” The book is slated for fall 2021.
At Artforum, Dodie Bellamy remembers her late husband, the poet-novelist-biographer-playwright Kevin Killian, on the anniversary of his death.
On Friday, PEN America, with the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, filed an amicus brief that opposes the Trump administration’s legal efforts to stop former national security advisor John Bolton from publishing his forthcoming book, The Room Where It Happened, which is set to be released tomorrow. “PEN America supports the First Amendment right of public employees to produce works that are critical of the government, and of readers to receive their unique perspective unfettered by government censorship,” the brief states. On Saturday, a federal judge refused to block publication of Bolton’s memoir. “Defendant Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States. He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability. But these facts do not control the motion before the Court,” the judge concluded. “The government has failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm. Its motion is accordingly denied.”
Mary L. Trump has written a book titled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which is scheduled to be published by Simon and Schuster on July 28, and is already “soaring up the charts with pre-sale orders.” Now, her uncle and the book’s subject, Donald Trump, has asserted that she is “not allowed” to write the book due to a nondisclosure agreement she signed in 2001.
