At The Millions, Raksha Vasudevan talks to Margo Jefferson about feminism, whiteness, and combining criticism and memoir in her 2015 book Negroland. “I’d spent my writing life as a critic. My initial feeling was that those kinds of tones and voices had to go; this was memoir,” she said. “But then, I realized, no, that was as much a fixed part of my identity as other things. I realized I had to include the critic who is diagnosing, who is assessing, who is judging against a kind of backdrop that is aesthetic, cultural, political.”
PEN International and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts are collaborating “to monitor gender disparities in literature” worldwide through the PEN VIDA count.
The New York Times Magazine profiles Deborah Eisenberg.
New York magazine’s Boris Kachka examines the “backlash to the backlash at the New York Review of Books.”
Kristinn Hrafnsson has taken over as editor in chief of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, who has been stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 and had no access to the internet or visitors for the last six months, will stay on as publisher. “I condemn the treatment of Julian Assange that leads to my new role,” Hrafnsson said, “but I welcome the opportunity to secure the continuation of the important work based on WikiLeaks ideals.”
The New York Times opinion section has apologized for posting a Twitter poll asking if users found Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony to be credible, calling the format “insensitive in light of the gravity of this hearing.”