To read August 11, 2016

MY BODY IS READY: The Moral Arc of N.K. Jemisin's Universe Bends Toward Apocalypse
(The Obelisk Gate comes out on Tuesday and I am desperately impatient but it will be fine I swear really it's only life-changing and perfection)

N.K. Jemisin on Why—and How—to Create Diversity in Science Fiction
Surviving the Survival: Ocean Vuong on exploring fear, his family, and why turning your back on your work is a good idea.

Scoping Out Comic-Con With Lord of the Rings Superfan Margaret Atwood

Ode to the Tampon

The horror of female adolescence – and how to write about it

Decolonise, not Diversify

Also, I read Pond last night. The whole thing. One night. Mind = blown to glitter bits. Pond is a debut novel that takes place entirely within the thinking layers and words of a woman who lives by herself mostly and sort of does things and sort of doesn't do things and it's all very familiar and strange and ultimately incredibly unsettling in the way that only the most unknown normalcy can be. Imagine a travelogue to someone else's dream-scape translated into your day to day. Only it's not a dream, mostly, and she's not really trying to make you comfortable.

Claire-Louise Bennett offers us a character whose vocabulary is broad and giddy, and whose interests spill far far away from the edges of this bit of her living that we are shown. It is an incredible novel, best explored over something buttery, perhaps cut with a poem or two. For texture. Excellent late summer reading.

CD Wright's Cooling Time leapt off of the used poetry shelf at me the other day, so I took it home and we have Shared Some Moments, I tell you what. 

To read August 10, 2016

Black science fiction writers face 'universal' racism, study finds

Diversity In Book Publishing Isn't Just About Writers — Marketing Matters, Too

Is It Story That Makes Us Read?

Malafemmena (review)

Podcast: Stacy Mitchell on How Big-Box Retailers Undercut the American Middle Class

Black-owned banks get rush of new depositors

Black Protest Writing, From W.E.B. Du Bois to Kendrick Lamar

How to Survive as an American Writer in Bulgaria

On order for me: Volume 1 of Black Panther out in September, and The Cruel Way originally published in 1947.

From the galley shelves: Girl Trouble by Kerry Cohen out in October and What is Love by Carrie Jenkins out in January 2017

Currently chomping at the bit for The Obelisk Gate which I won't be able to read for many days because of book group the night the book is released and also writing group the night after (because after lo these many years, I am finally going to go to writing group) and then I will probably get up very early on Thursday and just drown in the book and that is fine by me.

A poem:

"On my persistent need to address others by full first name" by Meg Matich

To read - June 14th

...in no particular order, and with the promise of a Cliff Approved Movie Idea next time (which I have to say in advance because it broke Lauren a lot)

Sometimes it is not easy to get to everything and also Orlando and also the Tony's and mostly Orlando and words inside about violence and masculinity and horror and tragedy and fear and love and love and love. So, these are the evidence that the world continues, that there is beauty and life in it. This is how I frame tomorrow.

The 10 Most Poetic Cities in the World by Julian Yanover on My Poetic Side

ALA Responds to Orlando days before their conference is scheduled to open there.

Canterbury Tales rebooted with refugee stories of tracking and detention by Alison Flood at The Guardian Books

Harry Potter and the Return of the Midnight Parties by Judith Rosen at PW

Black Girls Can Be Princesses Too, That's Why I Wrote My Books by Mylo Freeman at The Guardian Books

Varney's in Manhattan, KS is closing after 126 years - which is unfathomable to me, especially as we live in a country where there are so few cultural institutions that have survived our tumultuousness that the loss of every one is greeted with heartache.

Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop is crowd-funding moving to a bigger location to provide more services and accessibility. Props to them for focusing on what safety and service means in a different age.

Also, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith came out. This one. Read This One. As Cliff says: "To simply call this book amazing would be to do it a disservice. It's so much more than that. This book serves as a tribute to all of the young, black, marginalized girls, boys, men and women who've unjustly lost their lives and futures at the hands of a system that refused to see them. With this book Mychal demands that you see them."

Ashley Ford is the best.

Jenny Zhang is the best.

Why Hollywood Doesn't Tell More Stories For - and About - Girls at The Atlantic by Anya Jaremko-Greenwold - be warned, do not read this if you are in a place where you cannot get angry safely. Like not at the tea room. Or probably at work. Or if you are feeling a lot of things right now about the dangers of boys being boys and the gross inequality in positions of influence in entertainment and all of the work that it takes to de-colonize one's imagination. Like, basically, be careful reading this if you are a person who is alive right now and feeling things at all. But please don't forget to read it.

June 9 list with no context

June 18-26 of 2016 is Independent Bookshop Week in the UK. Perfect reason to take a trip, no? #IBW2016

Another Round, the life-giving/saving/enriching podcast from Buzzfeed has a newsletter. The newsletters are archived. Because you want to sign up for the thing, but maybe you've just discovered it and want all of the Vines and all of the links and everything that makes the Internet worthwhile.

PubWest Book Design Awards are announced. The list has no images of the designs that won, but, hey.

Lisa McInerney has won the Baileys Women's Prize. For actual information, go here.

Does Literary Criticism Have a Grade Inflation Problem? from Alex Shepard at The New Republic. I mean, outside of it seems like people really miss being able to read a book being thoroughly destroyed in print (humans are weird), there is a sense that in a changing cultural climate, the standards for "good" and "bad" are shifting dramatically, so maybe the rating systems that exist are part of the problem. Which is not what the article is actually about, mind. It's just what happened in my head when I read it.

The (Amazon) problem is bigger than you think.

There is this: The Depressed Cake Shop. Raising awareness for mental health one gray cake at a time. (thanks to Cliff for showing me this)

Also are you getting Two Bossy Dames newsletter? Because they wrote a lot about Lady Rage the other day and it is getting me in all the places and everyone needs to be talking about it. (hint: they get The Hulk thing)(it is everything)

New Segment!
Cliff-approved Movie Ideas: So. It's a coming of age buddy movie about three groups of girls getting to a Beyoncé concert. Ava Duvernay directs this rollicking road trip comedy about three groups of girls - two of them rivals at the same school just after their sophomore year, another their older sisters who are headed off to college - trying to navigate their way across the suburbs to the sold-out Beyoncé concert the night after graduation. Hijinks ensue as cell phones die, GPS lies and hapless though loving boyfriends & family members just get in the way. Stay in your seats after the show for amazing backstage selfies! Dream cast includes Amandla Stenberg, Tessa Thompson, Quevenzhané Wallis, Skai Jackson, Willow Smith, This Girl Who Is The Hero Of All Of Us, John Boyega (as the boyfriend who Kind of Gets It), and RJ Cyler (as the boyfriend who Is Learning It).

June 8th Reading

LGBTQ Lit for Children and Teens Comes of Age from Publishers Weekly:

When David Levithan wrote the YA novel Boy Meets Boy (Knopf, 2003), he faced a precedent in which books with LGBTQ characters were issue-based: focused on the angst of coming out in a hostile world. “We were tired of the misery plot, and wanted to re-write it,” Levithan recalls. “I wanted to write a romantic comedy.”Today, that “misery plot” is no longer the norm and 2016’s children’s books and YA novels depict a wider range of LGBTQ experiences and family dynamics. Increasingly, the central conflict has little to do with being gay.

Yes, please, let's talk about my favorite of the Harry Potter movies, yes! How Prisoner of Azkaban Changed the Harry Potter Franchise and Young Adult Cinema Forever by Kayti Burt at Den Of Geek

It is super important that Hermione Granger is Black. Jessica Pryde writes about why it is important to her over at Book Riot

Sweet Reads Book Store is open in Michigan. You guys. Yesterday it was books and bikes. Today it is books and candy.

Also books and movies and a massive imaginative mural. Because of course! The Bookshelf in Guelph, Ontario

BBC4 is making a documentary about Virago: International Publisher of Books by Women

Beyoncé is not shining a light on African literature - it's the other way around from Ainehi Edoro for Brittle Paper, part of The Guardian Books Network

Bear in mind that Beyoncé is not simply an individual but the meeting point of a set of global cultural forces. If African literature is circulating globally on the crest of this confluence of culture, power, and capital called Beyoncé, we have to be able to intelligently identify the form of the value it generates. But this value can’t be reduced to a case of Queen Bey knighting her African literary flavor of the month with a patch of her cultural estate.

In news from places where I've lived: The Bookloft in Great Barrington, MA is changing hands. Apparently the owners are going to retire, learn to fish and keep running their other bookstore down the highway in Stockbridge. Because booksellers truly do not retire.

The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas and Erin Stead looks AMAZING.

Birthday reading June 7, 2016

Hipster nonsense or Amazing idea? I'm leaning toward amazing, myself. Books & Bikes in Florida.

Native American and Indigenous Lit Forge New Trails from ElectricLit

More fuel for the fire that will eventually consume Amazon - this time it's about taxes.

4 Times an African Writer Rewrote a Western Classic and Nailed It from Brittle Paper

Whoopi Goldberg talks about the power of hearing stories (with your ears)

Negin Farsad is everything. Here is her proving it. Also she can rock red lipstick like I only wish I could.

What I'm Reading June 2nd, 2016

Roxane Gay is the Judge of the Book of the Month for June. She picked The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel. Because she is perfection and her taste is, therefore, exquisite. Also I agree with her and think that this book is amazing.

The finalists have been announced for The Caine Prize for African Writing.

BookLife announces a new prize for fiction.

Feminist Frequency has a newsletter wherein there are interviews with extremely interesting women, links to projects and updates on their video series.

...the fuck is this? by Bim Adewunmi (also a newsletter) mostly ruminations and observations in short-ish form.

Not much more than that today, as I am still reeling from Shakespeare Festival's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. A group of about 15 of us saw the first preview last night and while I have a lot of really important things to say about it, I will stick with: it is amazing. I recommend everyone go and see it. If you don't live in St. Louis, you should plan a trip here before the 26th of June and see this show.