A Seat at the Table

With many bookstores across the country lacking proper accommodations, authors with disabilities are increasingly advocating to make book tours more accessible, for both themselves and their readers. Macmillan has tapped Brenna Connor, who left her role as director and industry analyst for Circana BookScan last month, to join the publisher’s consumer insights team. And Gilbert Cruz is leaving the New York Times Book Review, which he’s led since 2022, to take on a new role heading up the paper’s “canon and signature lists.” In other news, Anthropic has called on tech firms worldwide to coordinate a “brake pedal” for AI development, citing the technology’s emerging ability to self-improve, per the Wall Street Journal. Following its controversial attempt to remove Alex Haley’s Roots from school libraries, the Knox County, Tenn., school board has called on the state legislature to revise its Age-Appropriate Materials Act, reports WVLT. Sadie Sink has been tapped to star in FX’s limited series adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot, per Deadline. Vulture’s Jasmine Vojdani examines how lit mags are handling the surge in AI-generated submissions, and the Atlantic’s Walt Hunter reflects on the way anxiety over AI is shaping how we read. And British writer Maureen Duffy, Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben, and thriller author Timothy Johnston have died at 92, 84, and 63, respectively.