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Or is it self-immolating? In any case, when the RWA suspended writer Courtney Milan, who had spent years on its ethics committee and pushing for more inclusion and equity, for calling a book “a racist mess,” a boulder of anger, past racist treatment, secret committees, and a board exodus started rolling down the RWA’s hill of money and influence. Will the organization – 40 years old and at the forefront of a billion dollar industry – survive? (For more, here’s a complete timeline of what’s been happening.) – Houston Chronicle

In a country not exactly known for the free flow of ideas, delays and freezes in publishing have changed what’s available in China. “Publishing industry insiders describe a near freeze of regulatory approvals, one that could make the publishing industry reluctant to buy the rights to sell American books in China.” That freeze may be thawing, or may not be – but in the meantime, U.S. authors and publishers have lost a major group of readers. – The New York Times

While Cambridge cut out its medieval requirement, Oxford – under the influence of Lewis and Tolkien – doubled down. That weirdly influenced the fantasy all over the English-speaking world. “At the moment that the British Empire is waning, you see this rise of children’s fantasy literature, which is set in these kinds of precolonial worlds, but also imagining these new vistas for exploration and the pleasures of exploration and colonization, encounters with indigenous peoples—but cloaked in a different story, where the people you’re encountering are ‘magical creatures,’ so you’re free of political resonances.” (Narrator: You’re actually not.) – Slate