SHE LIT: In Female-Dominated Publishing Industry, Pay Gaps PersistA union representing hundreds of employees from a major publisher vote to strike in an effort to raise pay and promote diversity.
📚 Join the #shelitbookclub on July 31 as we discuss the novel Red Clocks by Leni Zumas amid the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Details can be found here.
HarperCollins employees say diversity and inclusion is not prioritized at publisher
Unionized employees of HarperCollins Publishers voted to strike earlier this week, citing concerns with low pay as a result of the book industry leader not promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion the way it promised.
Returning from the three-day July 4 holiday weekend, the Local 2110 of the UAW union said its 250+ members voted to authorize a strike as it negotiates a “fair contract” with the publisher.
Members include employees in editorial, sales, publicity, design, legal, and marketing departments. They say they want higher pay, better family leave benefits, stronger union protection, and a real commitment to staff diversity and inclusion.
The average female employee at HarperCollins earns an annual $55,000 with a starting salary of $45,000, according to the union’s press release announcing the potential strike. That doesn’t cover the cost of living in New York City, the release notes.
“Our compensation doesn’t reflect our education and skills, or our contributions to the financial success of the company,” said union chairperson Laura Harshberger, a senior production editor in children’s books, in the release.
Not only is the gender pay gap in the spotlight with this news, but so is the racial pay gap with the union saying the lack of racial and ethnic diversity at HarperCollins has contributed to the “historically low wages.” The publisher had “record profits” in 2021, parent company News Corp. mentions in a press release last August.
The union says HarperCollins is the only major book publisher in the U.S. to be unionized. The contract negotiations with HarperCollins management have been ongoing since December 2021.
The publishing industry is about 74% cisgender women and 23% cisgender men, according to a survey released in 2020 by Lee & Low Books, a family-run, minority-owned, independent publisher.
Women may dominate the industry, but men tend to better rise in the ranks with 38% of cisgender men holding executive and board member positions.
For the race and ethnicity breakdown, the industry is 76% White. “The field is overwhelmingly White women,” the survey says.
No date has been set for the strike since negotiations are still not done. Whether they strike or not, the publishing industry as a whole has a long way to go with closing the gender and racial pay gap. If a strike happens, we may see more major publishers dealing with employees wanting to unionize in an effort to not only raise wages but to diversify the industry.
Macmillan still recovering from cybersecurity attack
Macmillan Publishers is back up and running after a debilitating data breach that slowed down operations for at least a week. The publisher announced it was functional again on July 4. Media reports say the publisher is working through a backlog of orders from booksellers.
Scholastic recalls kid’s book over choking hazard
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of Scholastic’s “Shake Look Touch” books. The books have pom poms attached, and Scholastic received two reports of the pom poms detaching, causing a choking concern for young children. The federal agency says roughly 185,700 books are on the market with an additional 1,500 sold in Canada. Scholastic is offering $10 gift cards to consumers who show a photo of removed pom poms and affirm they will be thrown away. The books are still usable without the pom poms.
Book club picks highlight Black female experience
Reese Witherspoon’s book club and Meena Harris’ book club selected two titles by Black women about Black women. Reese’s Book Club will read Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola this month that features a college radio talk show host who questions her love life after telling listeners to avoid situationships. The Phenomenal Book Club chose Big Girlby Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, a semi-autobiographical debut novel first set in 1990s Harlem focused on a “morbidly obese” girl who moves through life with that diagnosis.
What we’re reviewing
Both these authors have new books out now. Check out these book reviews on their previous best-sellers!
What we’re reading
Crying in the Bathroomby Erika L. Sánchez
The breakout author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter Erika L. Sánchez has written a collection of essays from her experiences growing up with Mexican immigrant parents in 1990s Chicago to now being an award-winning writer. Some of the topics covered in the essays include White feminism and severe depression.
The former national TV host, advice columnist, and professor Carmen Rita Wong shares her examination of her family life. She lives with her Dominican mother in Harlem and spends time with her Chinese father in Chinatown, then she moves to New Hampshire when her mother marries her White stepfather. As her mother and stepfather have kids, she’s edged out and doesn’t understand why until her mother tells her the truth.
Comedic actress Phoebe Robinson is sorta adapting her book to TV. Also the founder of Tiny Reparations publishing imprint, Phoebe is starring in Everything’s Trash that debuts July 13 with a two-episode premiere on Freeform with episodes available to stream the next day on Hulu. Her second book, Everything’s Trash But It’s Okay, was released in 2018 and details her life in essays. The show takes a page from her life as her character is a podcast host looking for love while remaining true to herself amid her politician brother’s rise to fame.
The Harbor Arts & Books Fair in Camden, Maine, will have vendors selling artwork and books this weekend near the Camden Harbor. The local library is even boasting a “massive outdoor book sale” with thousands of books, DVDs, CDs, and audio books running up to Sunday, July 10. Also in Maine, Books in Boothbay will holds its annual book festival at the Boothbay Railway Village Museum. An estimated 40 authors are expected to headline the morning and afternoon sessions on Saturday, July 9.
Penguin Random House is seeking an assistant to join the advertising and promotion department of Penguin Publishing Group. A top job duty is coordinating, pitching, and optimizing advertising campaigns with outside vendors and within ad platforms. The job is based in New York City with a starting salary of $45,000 (same number in intro above) with benefits.
📚 Join the #shelitbookclub on July 31 as we discuss the novel Red Clocks by Leni Zumas amid the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Details can be found here.
Words get twisted after an author and librarian discuss banned books at event
Over the last week, the American Library Association hosted its 2022 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., and a panel about banned books became a hot topic on #BookTwitter with numerous authors and librarians alike sharing their opinions.
From the social media comments, young adult best-selling author and banned books ambassador Jason Reynolds was attacked over the assumption he supported Holocaust denial books being made available at libraries. Nancy Pearl, an author dubbed “Seattle’s most famous librarian” by The Seattle Times who was sitting on the Unite Against Book Bans panel last Saturday, implied she felt bad for keeping Holocaust denial books on library shelves because they’re “needed.”
So, should books that promote disinformation and misinformation like Holocaust denial books be banned from libraries?
What sparked the firestorm is a tweet that went viral on #BookTwitter from librarian Kelsey Bogan who said the panel seemed to have a “sentiment” that Holocaust denial books should stay on library shelves.
“What did I not want to add in the collection? Personally, I did not want to add Holocaust-denying books. That was offensive to me. Did I think we needed them? Sad to say, yes,” said Nancy, who is Jewish, as quoted in the panel’s livestream viewed by Jewish Insider. “But we talk about — we’re anti, we shouldn’t ban books. It’s much more nuanced and it’s much more difficult than one often tends to think that it is.”
As the Black male author on the panel, Jason seemed to be more in the crossfire than Nancy when it came to social media commentary.
Further in her Twitter thread, Kelsey says Jason “did not initiate the comment but did verbally agree/state it too, sort of against his better judgement?” Jason tweeted in response to Kelsey that he may have been “inarticulately trying to say” his thoughts on the subject of Holocaust denial books in reference to banned books.
But the main Black Twitterverse authors Dhonielle Clayton, Bethany C. Morrow, and LL McKinney said the barrage of negative comments about Jason over the panel is an example of anti-Blackness since the author never made the original comment, but due to his proximity to Nancy the commenter, he became more than fair game on social media. They and other supporters of Jason noted that the apologies and clarifications from Nancy and Kelsey came days later, enough time for more tweets to be written up against Jason.
For a bit of background, books that deny the Holocaust, promote gay conversion, claim abortion is murder, or recommend vaccines kill people, for example, usually are not under the umbrella of banned books. They tend to stay on shelves, if libraries allow them, unless an individual or group advocate for their removal from a library.
Most books are banned from libraries after concerns have been brought up about the books being read by children. The books that usually see bans center on the diversity of experiences dealing with race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.
The conversation was really about library collection development policies, according to Unite Against Book Bans, a national initiative supporting the fight against censorship and the panel sponsor. Nancy, in her words, tried to say she has put Holocaust denial books on library shelves because it’s still literature that should be accessible.
She said the same thing in a 2017 article for The World. Here’s a snippet from the article:
Pearl says there have been times where she’s come across a book she doesn’t agree with or finds offensive. This is a time where she says she has to give herself a “stern talking to.”
Books promoting Holocaust denial have come to Pearl’s library. She puts them on the shelf, regardless of her opinion.
“It wouldn’t be a library if there weren’t books that annoyed people.”
Ultimately, she says, reading makes people more compassionate. “It makes us get outside ourselves.” Something she feels people need to do more and more in today’s political and cultural climate.
The banned books movement is to ensure books covering different experiences are made available to readers, especially children depending on the reading level and genre. The fate of books that could be classified as misinformation — defined as incorrect or misleading information, or disinformation — defined as false information deliberately and often covertly spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth, is still up in the air.
Jenny Han Talks Asian Representation in Books on ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Tour
What we’re highlighting
Macmillan sees book sales impacted by cybersecurity attack
Publishing giant Macmillan Publishers saw its computer systems become compromised by a data breach this week. Industry news outlet Publishers Lunch reported the “security incident” on Monday and said Macmillan noticed the incident on Saturday and had to close its offices for most of the week.
Staffers took to Twitter to say they were slowly gaining access back into their Google Suite tools, including Gmail.
Bookstores said they weren’t able to place orders with Macmillan, which ultimately is impacting book sales, reported the Wall Street Journal. As of today, orders can be placed in the U.S. but not processed, according to Publishers Lunch.
Third book in Tomi Adeyemi’s best-selling series announced
The third novel from Tomi Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orisha fantasy YA series is titled Children of Anguish and Anarchy, according to the author’s Instagram post on Monday. In two photos featuring blue sticky notes, one photo shows the title while the next one reads “Destruction is a form of creation.” The book follows the record-breaking Children of Blood and Bone and the 2019 follow-up Children of Virtue and Vengeance.
On the Come Up film trailer debuts at BET Awards
Angie Thomas of The Hate U Give fame will see her sophomore novel on the big screen. On the Come Up features Bri, an up-and-coming teen rapper trying to follow in her late father’s footsteps. The trailer was first seen on the BET Awards last Sunday. Set to be released on Paramount+, the movie will be actress Sanaa Lathan’s directorial debut. Sanaa has been involved in book-to-TV projects such as the 2000 film Disappearing Acts based on Terry McMillan’s novel of the same name.
What we’re reviewing
What we’re reading
American Royalty by Tracey Livesay
Rapper Duchess is about to sign a life-changing deal to make her one of the richest women in hip-hop until an event that could derail the deal goes viral. Prince Jameson likes staying in his castle all day when he’s summoned to put on the Queen’s benefit concert. Adding a rapper named Duchess to the performer lineup sounds perfect. And Duchess needs positive publicity. But they’re both about to find out how that decision can change how the world perceives them.
Student radio show host Kiki Banjo has made it her mission to make sure the women of the African-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University do not fall prey to “situationships.” Then she kisses a boy in front of campus that she just crowned as situationship material. Now, they’re in a fake relationship to save their reputations, but the attraction may be more electrifying than Kiki thought it would be.
The overturning of U.S. Supreme Court landmark decisions Roe v. Wade of 1973 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey of 1992 by last week’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has put a spotlight on the pro-abortion and anti-abortion movements.
Abortion bans are starting to take effect in states that had recently passed laws to restrict the reproductive procedure. As another social justice movement takes hold, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel-turned-TV-series, The Handmaid’s Tale, comes to mind.
The book is always available for a visit or a revisit while the show is streaming its fourth season now on Hulu with a fifth season in the works.
Literacy Partners is looking for a manager of volunteers and home libraries. The organization offers free classes, community-based workshops, and educational media for low-income parents to develop the literacy and language skills they need to succeed. This position is remote and in-person in New York. Other positions, including full remote, are available on the organization’s website.
June is Pride Month! Join the #shelitbookclub this Sunday at 11 a.m. as we discuss the recently banned young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera. More info on joining the conversation can be found here🏳️
Set to a recycled hypnotic beat, Beyoncé’s new single ignites dream job conversation
In a week where rapper Drake dropped a whole album, pop queen Beyoncé made a splash Monday with a single from her upcoming album that is allegedly having people quit their jobs. But “Break My Soul” is emphasizing the path to self-expression, which speaks volumes in a creative field like book publishing.
Only 7% of Americans surveyed were working their dream jobs, according to a report from MoneyPenny that came out last August. The survey also emphasized how that also meant a whopping 93% of employees were not working in their dream jobs.
Last year’s Great Resignation, also being dubbed the Great Reflection, inspired 47 million people to quit their jobs as the demand for better treatment in the workplace became a rallying cry during the Covid-19 pandemic. One in five of those people who resigned say they regretted it, according to a Harris Poll survey for USA Today.
But those unhappy with the transition may have moved too fast, said LinkedIn career expert Catherine Fisher on CBS Mornings in April.
Beyoncé’s newest single, which looks like it will be the sixth track on the Renaissance album out in July, uses voice samples from Big Freedia’s “Explode” and beats from Robin S.’s 1993 hit “Show Me Love.” In “Explode” and in the background of “Break My Soul,” Big Freedia sings, “Release your anger, release your mind / Release your job, release the time / Release your trade, release the stress / Release the love, forget the rest.”
Release your job? Release your trade? Release your stress? Social media lit up with the interpretations that Beyoncé was telling people to quit their jobs. And BuzzFeed News reports that in fact some people went ahead and quit their jobs in part to Beyoncé’s song but mostly due to their longing to release the job, the trade, and the stress.
The average business in the book publishing industry employs more workers than it did five years ago, according to the IBISWorld, though employment growth in the industry is expected to be 0.1% this year.
Employment of writers and authors is projected to grow 9% between 2020 and 2030, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found. There are usually over 15,000 job openings each year, mostly due to people leaving the workforce by choice or by retirement.
With all this data, it may be safe to say we’ll see more book lovers working in publishing houses, literary agencies, and bookstores while many could be rethinking their author and book influencer dreams.
ACLU files motion to dismiss obscenity claims against books
The American Civil Liberties Union says it filed motions seeking to dismiss obscenity proceedings in Virginia this week against two books on the behalf of local bookstores.
A state law, which the ACLU says hasn’t been used “in decades,” was used by a Virginia resident to claim Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas are obscene and shouldn’t be made available to young readers through Virginia Beach public schools and Barnes & Noble bookstores.
In May, the Virginia Beach Circuit Court ordered the books’ authors and publishers to show cause why their books should not be considered obscene.
OverDrive to aid libraries in providing ‘access for all’
Digital library catalog app OverDrive announced it will unveil toolsat the American Library Association Annual Conference & Exhibition to bring instant access to curated collections of e-books, audiobooks, and magazines to readers who are unable to install the app.
The main tool, Public Access Connect, will reach readers at their locations by using open Wi-Fi and QR codes. These efforts aim to especially help readers in areas with low internet access, seniors, children, and incarcerated individuals.
What we’re reviewing
Still looking for books by LGBTQIA+ authors and/or featuring LGBTQIA+ characters? Here are some reviews of books you may have missed.
What we’re reading
Body Grammar by Jules Ohman
Photographers flock to Lou once she turns 18 for a chance to profit off her androgynous look in this new adult queer debut novel. But Lou doesn’t want any parts of the modeling industry until tragedy strikes. Then she’s moving to New York from Portland and walking the fashion runways. As she maneuvers in a body she was never comfortable in, she worries she’s losing who she is.
The newest novel from Georgia Clark follows two families—one American and one Australian as they embark on a chaotic vacation. The only thing these families have in common are their two daughters are married to each other. A nearby volcano starts erupting, and before they know it, they’re stranded on the island for six weeks. In this course of time, similar to the Covid-19 pandemic for some, the characters now have the time to talk about how they handle queer romance, family secrets, and ambition.
Based on Jenny Han’s best-selling YA romance trilogy, this new series on Amazon Prime features almost 16-year-old Belly Conklin, played by Lola Tung, as she heads to her family’s summer getaway at Cousins Beach. But over the past year, Belly has grown up, and her growth will make the summer unforgettable. The author is also the executive producer.
The Austin African American Book Festival will be held on Saturday, June 25, at the George Washington Carver Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. In its 16th year, the book festival will be headlined by author Dr. Julianne Malveaux who will discuss her book, Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History.
Sourcebooks, which calls itself the largest woman-owned trade book publisher in North America, is looking for an editorial assistant/assistant editor. On its Wonderland editorial team, the perfect candidate will be expected to conduct industry research, manage author relationships, and some other duties. The position is ideally based in the Chicago area.
June is Pride Month! Join the #shelitbookclub with reading the recently banned young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera 🏳️
Black authors still struggle to get recognized for their creative freedom
At the height of the racial justice movement in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Black authors started tweeting about their realities in the publishing industry.
Floyd, a Black man whose life is the subject of the new book His Name Is George Floyd by The Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, died after White police officer Derek Chauvin pinned his knee onto Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. A worldwide uprising followed people into their workplaces. Black authors like L.L. McKinney wanted to know how unfair pay can be for someone like her.
The A Blade So Black fantasy young adult author created the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag two years ago, where White authors were asked to share the amount of money they had been paid for their books. But Black authors and other authors of color began to share how they had been lowballed for their books. With more attention to the Black experience, L.L. McKinney started the Juneteenth Book Festival.
The festival, which was held in 2020 and canceled in 2021, played virtually on YouTube with authors such as Ashley Woodfolk, Mikki Kendall, and Nichole Perkins headlining panels. This year, the festival seemed to be offline; the last tweet posted in 2021 with L.L. being “on hiatus.” But in Portland, Oregon, Nanea Woods decided to have The Freadom Festival, the city’s first Black book festival this weekend.
“How we obtained our freedom has a lot to do with reading and literacy,” she toldThe Oregonian.
Juneteenth is the holiday many Black communities across the U.S. had been celebrating for generations to mark the official end of slavery when people who had been enslaved in Galveston, Texas, finally received the message in 1865 they were free. Over the racial uprising of 2020, the federal government moved to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021 observed on June 19. For many employees, this coming Monday is the first time Juneteenth is a paid day off.
We started the week with best-selling White male author James Patterson telling the U.K.’s The Sunday Times “that it is hard for white men to get writing gigs in film, theatre, TV or publishing.” This stirred debate on social media.
Many commented that most of the authors who make the best-sellers lists are White men such as Bill O’Reilly, David Sedaris, and Dan Pfeiffer, all sharing The New York Times Best-seller list for Hardcover Nonfiction with Patterson, who has the top spot with his eponymous memoir. Famous Black actress Viola Davis is the only woman and person of color in the top five this week with her memoir, Finding Me.
It should be common knowledge that non-White authors do not dominate the charts most of the time. In fact, many authors of color never see a publishing deal. And if they do, they’re not paid adequately, evidenced by #PublishingPaidMe. L.L. McKinney vowed this week to focus on the positive when it came to Patterson’s remarks.
“I been thinking about saying something on James Patterson for the past couple of days, but instead I’ve decided to talk more about books by BIPOC that I have written or that I have read/loved,” she tweeted Wednesday, mentioning Black, Indigenous, and people of color authors.
Patterson has since apologized. In 2020, data analysis group WordsRated found a record 26% of children’s best-sellers were written by Black authors. In 2021, that percentage fell to 18%, below the numbers in 2019. This shows there is a lot more work to do in the publishing industry.
Taking lessons on raising antiracist children this Father’s Day
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, who’s now made a career out of teaching the masses on how to be antiracist, has a new book in time for Father’s Day this Sunday. How To Raise An Antiracistfollows his runaway hits How to Be an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby and focuses on how he turned away from thinking he had to shield his child from racism and decided to be a parent who teaches how to create a just world. The book is on sale now
LA’s oldest Black-owned bookstore closing
Eso Won Books, known as the main Black-owned bookstore in the Los Angeles area, will close its brick-and-mortar by the end of the year. Co-owner James Fugate recently made the announcement on The Tavis Smiley Podcast. The bookstore located in the predominantly Black Leimert Park neighborhood has been a fixture in the community for 33 years. More Black-owned bookstores have sprouted in LA over the last few years
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed revisits her roots and pieces together her story and the American story of how Juneteenth came to be. She examines her home state to pinpoint the inequality in the race-based and slavery-based economy spanning across centuries.
In this novel published after Ralph Ellison’s death in 1994, a race-baiting senator is mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet while making a speech on the Senate floor in D.C. On his deathbed, he summons an old Black minister to be by his side. We learn how their lives intertwined at one point and what drew them apart.
This new Disney+ show is getting rave reviews, especially for representation. It stars Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a Jersey City Muslim who discovers she has super powers. She, of course, names herself after her favorite hero, Captain Marvel. The series brings Ms. Marvel alive from the comics where she was introduced in 2014.
The Freadom Festival again is calling itself the first annual Black book festival in Portland, Oregon, that’s fittingly taking place on Juneteenth weekend. See local authors on Saturday, June 18 like Kim Johnson of This Is My America and Kesha Ajose Fisher of No God Like The Mother 🏽
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic Fellowship is looking for an editorial fellow interested in gaining experience in an independent publishing house to forge a career in publishing. The fellow will directly support Roxane Gay Books, a new imprint at Grove Atlantic, in building a list of fiction and nonfiction.
The one-year fellowship will pay a $25,000 stipend for 24 hours of work a week with health and dental benefits. Candidates can be based anywhere in the U.S. There will be an emphasis on candidates who are underrepresented in publishing
June is Pride Month! Join the #shelitbookclub with reading the recently banned young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera 🏳️•
Why banned books are disappearing from library shelves
The most banned book in the United States right now is Maia Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer. Maia, who uses the pronouns e/em/eir, illustrates eir experience growing up in rural San Francisco Bay Area in a graphic book where e undergoes traditional gendered events from getting eir first bra to developing crushes on boys and girls.
Published by Simon & Schuster’s Oni Press in 2019, the author’s autobiographical coming-of-age story held the top spot on the most banned and challenged books list compiled by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The group says the book has been “banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit images.”
Most books are banned from libraries and schools without much media fanfare, as in up to 97% of these books that are challenged will never be covered by the news. That means Americans, especially children, may never know why they can’t find a particular book at their local library.
Banned books have become a priority over the last few years since many of these works are by LGBTQIA+ authors as well as authors of color describing racial, ethnic, and cultural experiences like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas being famously banned and challenged for allegedly promoting an “anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda,” the ALA’s list notes.
I recently attended Books in Bloom, a so-called progressive book festival in Maryland, which celebrated banned books this year by adding panels with authors and experts discussing freedom of speech, including Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin and literary civil rights group PEN America. The partner indie bookstore Busboys and Poets mostly sold banned books, such as Gender Queer.
More people are taking action to support the sales of these books. Students are starting banned book clubs in their high schools. They’re even filing lawsuits against their schools for removing books. In retaliation of the increase in book censorship, Margaret Atwood modeled with a flamethrower to show off a fireproof version of her 1985 Hulu-adapted novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was auctioned off for $130,000 this week with proceeds going to PEN America.
As 2022 becomes a year of giving banned and challenged books a spotlight, the annual Banned Books Week will take place in September. That’s three months of really surveying the impact of banned and challenged books and hearing more authors speak about the freedom of speech. And maybe we’ll get more fireproof books…
June book club picks promise addictive summer reads
Oprah’s Book Club has chosen Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley. The debut novel centers on a young woman in Oakland who starts working on the streets at night to keep up with rising rent and the costs to support her family. But when she gets picked up by the police one night, she finds herself fighting to protect her freedom. The 19-year-old author, who’s also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, will sit down with Oprah in a livestreamconversation June 30 on Oprah Daily.
Best-selling memoirist gets spotlight in food docuseries
Coming off of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, you can catch the HBO Max docuseries Take Out with Lisa Ling about the stories of how Asian communities weaved their cuisines into the fabric of America. One episode follows Michelle Zauner aka indie recording artist Japanese Breakfast as she ventures the aislesof the Korean grocery chain H Mart and talks about her award-winning book Crying in H Mart
This new romantic young adult novel follows two teens who run away together during a school trip, leaving everyone confused. The story allows the reader to view the past when Zyla Matthews and Kai Johnson fall for each other as amusement park employees and the present with their whereabouts questioned by friends and families who thought they had broken up
TJ Powar Has Something to Prove by Jesmeen Kaur Deo
TJ Powar is cast as the beautiful girl in a viral meme while her cousin Simran, who doesn’t shave her body hair, becomes the undateable girl. To stand up for what’s right, TJ ditches her razors to show beauty comes in all forms in this new coming-of-age young adult novel. A master debater, TJ thinks the people around her might not care about her protest as she realizes she may be the harshest judge of all 🏽•⚖️
A summer getaway on the infamous Fire Island for a group of gay male friends follows the pattern of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice where Joel Kim Booster’s Noah is working too hard to make sure his best friend Bowen Yang’s Howie finds love. The movie allegedly failed the Bechdel test for not featuring enough women with the few women being called stereotypical lesbians. But the film centers on the realities of dating for Asian gay men. If you love an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, this is a flick for you 🏝️
The fifth annual Bronx Book Festival starts Thursday, June 9. The first in-person gathering in years will take place on Saturday, June 11 at Fordham Plaza with live programming and giveaways. A virtual Crowdcast will feature the programming on Sunday, June 12. Authors like Tiffany D. Jackson, Ibi Zoboi, and Tia Williams are expected to speak 🏽
Looking to break into books? Tiny Reparations Books, the Dutton and Plume-affiliated imprint headed by author and comedienne Phoebe Robinson, is looking for a publicity assistant. You just need to be a New Yorker with a strong interest in publicity and book publishing, and some other essentials.
The imprint is focused on publishing literary fiction and nonfiction as well as essay collections that highlight and amplify unique and diverse voices.
She Lit
