In our last issue, we wrote about the criticism of the very wealthy Poetry Foundation by its own fellows, who issued a list of demands that included immediate resignation of the foundation president and board of trustees chair. Those two people have now stepped down, and the Foundation has promised to donate $250,000 to the Artist Relief Fund (a step that was requested earlier this spring by many in the publishing community, on account of the pandemic) and another $750,000 to organizations fighting for social justice and working to advance racial equity in poetry and affiliated art. The organization also plans to partner with Black historians to research and document the debt that it owes to Black poets, research out-of-print books by Black poets in partnership with others, and form an Equity Oversight Committee to recommend changes in practices and programming. Learn more at Publishers Weekly.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
