Dawn Davis, a veteran book editor who was hired in 2020 to put Bon Appétit magazine back on track after mass resignations and allegations of racism at its parent company, Condé Nast, resigned on Tuesday. She will return to Simon & Schuster as the publisher of 37 Ink, an imprint she founded in 2013, and as executive editor of the Simon & Schuster trade imprint. “I’ve made the difficult decision to return to book publishing,” Ms. Davis wrote in a note to her staff at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, the company’s recipe website. She said that she would remain in the job until September, and cited successes like “helping build Bon Appétit and Epicurious’ authority in the culinary industry, developing delicious and thought-provoking content, growing our audiences across channels, and diversifying our team and the audiences that we reach.”But, she said in a public statement, “being away from books has only made me realize how much I love working on manuscripts.” She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In her first editor’s letter at Bon Appétit, in February 2021, Ms. Davis wrote that “when the call came to leave book publishing to take the helm at this storied magazine as it reckoned with racial and cultural equity, it was impossible to resist.”

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