Desire and Freedom

Claudia Rakine's Citizen: An American Lyric, which won the Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was included in our own list of "Nine Books for the Post-Ferguson Era," has been adapted for the stage, and previews are beginning in Los Angeles. Graywolf, the independent press behind Citizen, The Empathy Exams and On Immunity: An Inoculation, has interviewed the playwright behind the adaptation about the project and his process. As he explains it, "what makes the book—and the theatre piece—unique is that they expose and illuminate the small, sometimes unintended, and unconscious acts of everyday racism. Subtle, insidious, soul-crushing."

A publishing flap in three parts, with colons. 1: Publisher's Weekly details unsettling allegations about Night Shade Books -- an unwillingness to answer calls from writers or their agents, stolen digital rights, and missing royalty statements. 2: Night Shade issues an apology. 3: A wronged writer responds.