The Department of Justice has sued Penguin Random House in a move to block the publisher from acquiring Simon & Schuster. The DOJ’s focus on how the merger would impact the advances authors receive rather than potential effects for consumers “signals a significant shift,” the New York Times reports, in lawmaker attitudes toward corporate consolidation. The civil suit outlines how the proposed merger “would likely result in substantial harm to authors of anticipated top-selling books and ultimately, consumers.”
Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic, has shared her “in-progress, reverse-chronological list of books by Native and Indigenous writers.” The list of 252 books, Washuta writes, “came out of my frustrations with lists of Native American Heritage Months years ago, which didn’t always reflect what was being published. I wanted a list of our classics, newest books, & out-of-print titles.”
A team at ProPublica has mapped the spread of carcinogenic air pollution throughout the nation between 2014 and 2018. Residents can use their data analysis tool to identify how close they live to one of the hot spots. ProPublica found over a thousand such sites, and almost a quarter of the sites with the highest levels of pollution are in Texas. Almost all of the top twenty sites are in the South, where environmental regulations are looser. ProPublica also notes that “in predominantly Black census tracts, the estimated cancer risk from toxic air pollution is more than double that of majority-white tracts.”
The “Collaborative Works” issue of Poetry Magazine is out now. In the online edition, featured poets discuss how they worked together to create the writing in the magazine.
The Guggenheim Museum has announced a year-long poet-in-residence program in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Applications for the first residency, which will start in January, are open now through December 5.