Round Up: Roxane Gay, PEN Memberships, and NEA

From Roxane Gay pulling her book from Simon & Schuster to a list of NEA funded projects, here’s the latest literary news:

• In response to Simon & Schuster’s book deal with the writer Milo Yiannopoulous, author Roxane Gay has pulled her forthcoming book How To Be Heard from the publisher. “I can’t in good conscience let them publish it while they also publish Milo. So I told my agent over the weekend to pull the project,” Gay told BuzzFeed News. How To Be Heard, an autobiography, was set to be published by TED Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. As of this writing, the book has not yet been contracted elsewhere.
• Publishers Weekly, following in the steps of Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group, has offered to cover half the costs of a PEN Membership for all of the company’s employees. “PW urges other publishers to back the First Amendment through whatever efforts they deem to be the most effective,” Publishers Weekly wrote on Friday. PEN America works to protect freedom of expression and literature.
• A blueprint budget being circulated by the Trump Administration calls for cutting the National Endowment for the Arts. Tega Brain, an artist and environmental engineer, has created a website that compiles a list of all the projects that the NEA funded last year–including the Ploughshares Solos Omnibus Volume 4.

Image: Milwaukee Women’s March (Callie Reed; January 21, 2017)