Milo Yiannopoulos Drops Dangerous Lawsuit Against Simon & Schuster 

Controversial former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos has dropped his lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for cancelling the release of his memoir Dangerous, the New York Daily News [5] reported.

Last summer, Yiannopoulos sued the publisher for $10 million alleging breach of contract; S&S had cancelled the memoir [6] after video surfaced of Yiannopoulos seeming to defend sexual relationships between men and underage boys.

In papers filed in New York State Supreme Court Tuesday, Yiannopoulos and S&S asked that the case be dismissed “without costs or fees to either party.” Yiannopoulos had been representing himself in the suit after his lawyer quit in January, according to the Daily News.

“We are pleased that Mr. Yiannopoulos’ lawsuit has been withdrawn,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement. “We stand by our decision to terminate the publication of Mr. Yiannopoulos’ book.”  

Yiannopoulos, who eventually self-published Dangerous on July 4, wrote on Facebook Tuesday that giving up the suit was a “tough decision” but the “right one.”

PEN World Voices Festival Theme and Schedule Announced

PEN America has announced the theme for the 2018 PEN World Voices Festival [7]: Resist and Reimagine.

This year’s international literary festival, which each year brings together the world’s foremost authors and other luminaries, will feature more than 60 events at venues throughout New York City from April 16–22. PEN America Festival Director Chip Rolley explained that this year, “for the first time in its history, we are deliberately training the Festival’s wide lens on America itself, probing the fissures and inconsistencies in our own culture, alongside those of writers visiting from overseas.”

The festival will kick off with “Resist and Reimagine: Opening Night in Three Acts,” featuring the writers Colson Whitehead, Leila Slimani, Maxine Beneba Clarke, and Adam Gopnik. Other scheduled events deal with topics such as the #MeToo movement, authorship and cultural alienation, the Muslim American experience, and First Amendment tensions. New this year, as part of the festival’s new Next Generation Now series, the festivities on April 21 will feature interactive literary workshops for children, tweens, and young adults.

Lead sponsorship for the festival is provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. For a full schedule of events, visit the festival website [8].

Ingram Board of Directors Elects Youngsuk “YS” Chi

Board Chairman John R. Ingram announced Wednesday that the Ingram Board of Directors has elected Youngsuk “YS” Chi to join their ranks.

Chi currently serves as non-executive chairman of Elsevier, a company that provides scientific, technical, and medical information; he also runs corporate affairs for Elsevier’s parent company, RELX Group. Before Elsevier, Chi was chairman of Random House, Asia. He joined Ingram Micro in 1992 as a director and later served as vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific. At Ingram Book Group, he was chief operating officer and co-founder and chairman of Lightning Source LLC.

Chi recently served as chairman of the Association of American Publishers and concluded four years as the president of the International Publishers Association. A native of Korea, he earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at Princeton University and his master’s of business administration in finance at Columbia University. 

Golden Man Booker Prize to be Awarded for Prize’s 50th Anniversary

The Booker Prize Foundation has launched the Golden Man Booker Prize [9] to mark the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker Prize [10], which honors the best fiction and nonfiction books published in the U.K. in a given year.

This special one-time award will recognize the best work of fiction from the prize’s last five decades. Five judges will come up with a “Golden Five” shortlist, to be announced May 26; then the public will vote on the best of these on the Man Booker Prize website from May 26 to June 25. The winner will be announced on July 8 at the Man Booker 50 Festival in London.

The Booker Prize Foundation has been hosting events all this year to celebrate the anniversary, including author events at international literary festivals across the world; videos, livestreams, and podcasts; and an online exhibition on the Man Booker website [9].

PEN America 2018 Literary Award Winners Honored

The winners of PEN America’s 2018 Literary Awards [11], which recognize the best literature and translation of today, were honored Tuesday at a ceremony in New York City.

The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction went to Jenny Zhang for her short story collection Sour Heart (Lenny), while the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Award for book of the year went to Layli Long Soldier for her debut poetry collection WHEREAS (Graywolf Press).

Alexis Okeowo’s A Moonless, Starless Sky was awarded the PEN/Open Book Award, while Ursula K. Le Guin, who died in January, was awarded the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for No Time to Spare (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Previously announced awards given out Tuesday night included the PEN/Voelcker Award to poet Kamau Braithwait, the PEN/Manheim Medal for Translation to translator Barbara Harshav, and the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing to author Dave Kindred.

In addition, playwright Luis Alfaro received the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation for Theater Award for Master American Dramatist. The annual PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction went to author Edmund White, and the 2018 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature went to Irish writer Edna O’Brien.

See all of the 2018 winners here. [12]