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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Controversy Around This Year’s Fiction Pulitzer Selection
I just want to start out by saying I celebrate Percival Everett’s Pulitzer in Fiction win for James. It’s rare that everyone invested in the outcome of an award will be happy with the result, and so it is for this award for reasons of a rare but not unprecedented procedural plan B. “In a surprising twist, the prize went to Everett after the Pulitzer committee’s board failed to reach a consensus on the three finalists that the fiction jury initially presented,” Alexandra Alter reported for The New York Times. The vote went to considering a fourth jury-submitted option, James, rather than to skipping awarding a Fiction prize at all this year. Alter noted the discontent around this decision, specifically because the original three finalists were all women, but Mice 1961 author Stacey Levine’s question asking whether now, when diversity initiatives and the arts are under attack, is the time to “fuss” about the selection of James resonated with me (I’m a “no” on that one, in case it’s not clear). I do hope Levine and the other finalists get heaps of positive attention–their books sound fresh and fascinating. Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot and Gayl Jones’s The Unicorn Woman were nominated alongside Levine’s Mice 1961.
About That Romantasy “Fyre Fest of Book Festivals”
That quote is from author Kait Disney-Leugers, one of the A Million Lives attendees who took to TikTok to unpack the event advertised as gathering featuring “a vendor hall, panels, a content creation room, fandom cosplay meet ups, a cosplay competition and a ball.” If you guessed from the subject line that the tea wasn’t about how grand the event was, you guessed right. Numerous authors who showed up reported scant attendance, contradicting the turnout they were allegedly promised. Attendance is of course important to the quality of any event, but especially to authors who applied to sign at tables in hopes of selling books. You really have to see the TikToks (many of which have gone viral) to understand the bleakness described: the sad conference table, the mostly empty hall, the wash of corporate gray. The many legal marketing conferences I attended in my previous career seem glamorous by comparison. Attendees paid $50 to $250 per ticket, and author Perci Jay said she flew to Maryland from Texas to attend and planned a whole lot of big life events around participating. Whoof. What a mess. You can read about it and find some of the videos at The Cut.
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Florida Bookstore Removes LGBTQ+ Titles
Let’s minds-eye travel to Escambia County to the heart of a battle on book bans and censorship, and to the indie bookstore allegedly fighting a bizarro-world version of that fight, which is to say leaning into book banning rather than fighting against it. Bodacious Bookstore & Café current and former employees described for Dakota Parks at NBC News how they were directed to remove queer books from shelves and how some staff resigned in protest. The employees said the move was catalyzed by a complaint about profanity on a greeting card, which spurred a sort of audit of materials, but Escambia County is also home to the school district that pulled 1,600 book titles from shelves and is in the midst of federal lawsuits related to book bans. Former employees named Elliot Page’s Pageboy and Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper among the many titles removed from shelves. While a spokesperson for the bookstore’s owners denied that books were removed based on LGBTQ+ subject matter and attempted to cast doubt on the employee accounts, said accounts are pretty damning. We hate to see it.
Utah Bans 18th Book from All Public Schools Statewide
Unfortunately, the book banning news doesn’t stop there:
This week, the state of Utah added yet another book to its list of titles that must be removed from all public schools. On May 5, Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants was added to the state’s “Sensitive Materials” list. The book was published in 2006.
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