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Book Festivals Highlight Diverse Works Amid Banned Books Movement

Two book festivals in Maryland have kick-started the summer off in a year when literary diversity is under attack in the form of book bans.

Books in Bloom and Gaithersburg Book Festival held family-friendly community events that featured a number of authors who either identify on the diversity spectrum or are passionate about freedom of speech in literature. Over the last year, more parents nationwide are asking school libraries to take books off shelves they deem inappropriate for their children to read while some libraries are reactively subtracting books to avoid controversy.

This movement of banning books is sparking opposition as authors and readers alike are going out of their way to support not only freedom of speech but support the variety of books meant to be read by children. The political divide was felt at these book festivals and may become a theme for other similar events in the U.S. throughout the year.

Banned books gain spotlight

Books in Bloom calls itself a progressive book festival in the master-planned city of Columbia, Maryland. To show support for banned books, the festival dedicated one of its soundstages to authors who discussed freedom of speech.

A vibrant setting in Merriweather District’s Color Burst Park, the book festival had a giant book-shaped display describing some of the top banned books in history from Toni Morrison‘s Beloved and Song of Solomon to Alice Walker‘s The Color Purple. With Busboys and Poets as the independent bookstore for the event and a location in the park, most books for sale were books by authors who are Black and/or LGBTQIA+.

Queer memoirs All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe had notable stacks on the tables with other titles that have become the face of many bans though they were created for the middle grade and young adult audiences. The bans are usually due to racial and cultural content, sexually explicit content, and offensive language.

Headliners included a panel with PEN America, the nonprofit organization advocating in the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland’s 8th congressional district and author of Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. Raskin also attended Gaithersburg Book Festival to sell and sign his latest book.

The book festival’s keynote speaker was Carl Bernstein, the well-known The Washington Post reporter who co-headed the news coverage on the Watergate scandal in 1972. On the festival’s main stage, he marveled at his time growing up around Columbia and how he first became a cub reporter as a high school dropout in his new memoir, Chasing History: A Kid In The Newsroom.

The last Books in Bloom was held less than a year ago in-person in October with The New York Times reporter and The 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones serving as the keynote speaker.

Diverse works lead way

Reminiscent of a large outdoor book festival such as Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Maryland marked its 12th year as an event supporting the greater community with inviting traditionally published authors and offering seminars on book publishing and creative writing for children and adults.

Authors such Dhonielle Clayton, who has a new middle grade release with The Marvellers, and Kimberly Jones, who is promoting her social justice young adult novel Why We Fly with co-author Gilly Segal, discussed their works at the annual event. Dhonielle, a Gaithersburg native, and Kimberly are some of the top YA Black authors who have been outspoken about diversity in literature and social justice matters.

Asked about some of her summer read recommendations, Dhonielle mentioned Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter by Zoraida Córdova; the Track series by Jason Reynolds; and The Devouring Wolf by Natalie C. Parker, in which Dhonielle says there’s a wolf character named after her.

Another author at the event was Jeanine Cummins, who gained notoriety with her immigration novel American Dirt, interviewing Reyna Grande about her book A Ballad of Love and Glory. American Dirt follows a Mexican woman trying to escape to the U.S. with her young son after her family is murdered.

Some high-profile Hispanic and Latine authors spoke out about the White Latina author’s seven-figure advance because they said the publishing industry would never offer them such a sum for centering stories on Hispanic and Latine characters. They also claimed the book had inaccuracies in the culture and language that wasn’t native to the author. On the other hand, there were Hispanic and Latine authors and celebrities who supported the Oprah’s Book Club selection.

Since American Dirt came out in 2020, Jeanine, like many authors who had released their works at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, now have the chance to work the promotion circuit in-person.

Social justice and historical nonfiction were the focus of many authors’ works at the book festival. Gayle Jessup White talked about her lineage connected to former slave-holding president Thomas Jefferson in her book Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s Search for Her Lasting Legacy. Kristin Henning shared her experience representing Black youth in the D.C. court system and how she conceived the idea for her book The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth.

Along with Raskin, Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff for California’s 28th congressional district visited the event to chat about his book Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.

D.C. area indie bookstore chain Politics and Prose served as the event bookseller.

The pre-summer book festivals helped usher in the first literary events for authors and readers to enjoy as society emerges out of the pandemic and the world of book publishing remains volatile in the wake of book bans.

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‘Queenie’ Author Candice Carty-Williams Discusses Heavy Themes in Her Popular Book

Emil Huseynzade

Guest contributor Kidan Araya talks about seeing Queenie author Candice Carty-Williams on her Nov. 19 D.C. book tour stop.

Candice Carty-Williams, the Jamaican-British author behind one of the most widely discussed books of the year, made a stop in Washington, D.C. to discuss her debut novel Queenie.

Solid State Books, a relatively new locally owned bookstore that personifies the hipness of my generation by serving local kombucha, staying open late hours for people to study and meet, and having awesome bean bags, hosted the author in its northeast D.C. bookstore. It was a full house with a few standing attendees, which included mostly women of all races. The event was structured as a Q&A with Candice and local bookstagrammer Jamise Harper.

The audience jumped into questions and comments about Queenie. Many people praised the cover of Queenie and loved the “unapologetic Blackness” of the cover. When Candice was asked if she ever considered how the cover—an image of a Black woman with braids—could be a determining factor for certain demographics never picking up the book, Candice confidently stated she did not consider that at all. She also said she had received encouraging emails from readers saying the cover was the first time they had ever seen a Black woman in natural hair on a book cover and it made them feel more confident about wearing their own natural hairstyles.

There was also a discussion on the power of female friendships. Queenie’s friends and how their personalities offered something unique that helped Queenie significantly overcome her struggles. The audience also expressed their disappointment that Queenie never had a triumphant moment with Tom, her boyfriend who leaves her at the beginning of the novel. But Candice said she wanted the book to be as realistic as possible and most of us do not have a triumphant moment with our exes. Point made. Everyone also agreed that the comparisons between Queenie and Bridget Jones’s Diary were a bit hollow, as Queenie delved into so many different topics of our time such as racial tension and mental health.

Furthermore, the attendees also praised Queenie for its accurate depictions of mental health. In the novel, Queenie decides to see a therapist to help her cope with job stress and relationship drama. Specifically, the therapist helps her understand her behavior of why she chooses toxic relationships and hookups and how to become resilient after Ted, the married man she has an affair with, forces her job to place her on leave. The reader sees Queenie go through a variety of emotions with her therapy sessions: being uneasy at first; describing the anxiety of booking your first appointment; breathing techniques; discussing how earlier life trauma with our families actually influences our behavior; and continuing therapy even when her life starts turning around for the better.

When an audience member asked why Queenie only dates white men in the book, Candice described how growing up in the U.K. in Black Caribbean communities, many people are told that “the closer you can get to whiteness, the better,” including marrying white partners.

She also excitedly announced that Queenie is being adopted into television! She said Queenie will have a diverse array of love interests in the TV show.

Overall, the book discussion was made more excellent as Candice was a very candid and humorous author that was just as personable as the character Queenie (even though she swears that Queenie is not a biographical account). Everyone left happy and looking forward to hearing more news on the Queenie television adaption.

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Marie Forleo Talks About How ‘Everything is Figureoutable’

she lit From left, Grasie Mercedes speaks to Marie Forleo about her "Everything is Figureoutable" book at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Motivational guru Marie Forleo landed in Los Angeles as a part of her Everything is Figureoutable last Friday at the Skirball Cultural Center. Though the event was not an over-the-top “Beyoncé meets TED talk” compared to her home New York event, around 400 attendees came to listen to her reasoning behind her new self-help book.

In conversation with actress Grasie Mercedes currently writing for NBC’s Perfect Harmony, Marie glowing in a neon green top said her first book has been a work-in-progress since 2011. The event started with brave audience members jumping onto the stage to dance to the hottest pop songs from Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl and Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby.

After showing the audience a photo of her and Grasie in a Bring It On-era Crunch Fitness class from 20 years ago, Marie dropped wisdom about her philsophy behind the title of her book, which she said was inspired by her mother.

“This converation is really a follow-up if even we were to believe and accept this notion that everything is truly figureoutable—which again I believe in my bones to be the truth—then we need to ask ourselves what stops us, what gets in our way, what prevents us from figuring this out,” she said. “And while we can all come up with a laundry list of things that stops us, and one of the biggest things are our excuses. Those nasty little lies we all tell ourselves from time to time.”

Along with real-life stories on overcoming obstacles, the book has guidance on how to think positively in order to find solutions to everyday problems.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean we can change every circumstance to be the exact way that we want it to be—that’s not always possible,” she said. “But ‘Everything is Figureoutable’ awakens your creative wisdom, your own intiutive intelligence, so that you can rise up and meet the circumstances and challenges of your life and come out stronger, better, and bigger than you were before.”

She wants the book to make readers realize they have more control over their lives through thinking outside the box, and how not doing this exacerbates mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. Warning the book should not be used as treatment, she said it could help those dealing with mental health issues find creative and positive solutions to their predicaments.

With the event running about two hours, Marie ended the night with crowd selfies and photos with her book-purchasing fans. Book Soup was the sponsoring seller.

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Book Launch: ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth

Elaine Welteroth. Photo: Renell Medrano.

Elaine Welteroth, who reached prominence as the first black Teen Vogue editor and now as a Project Runway judge, stopped in Los Angeles Thursday for her book tour and discussed why she wrote the women empowerment memoir to an estimated 400-member audience.

What appeared to be a well-read black girl magic rally at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park started with the cheerful announcement that Elaine’s book had notched itself to the coveted New York Times Best Sellers list. She was then introduced by her former Teen Vogue colleague and friend Lynette Nylander, who conducted the fireside chat.

Right away, Elaine began reading from Chapter 16 in More Than Enough: Claiming Space For Who You Are (No Matter What They Say), which is dubbed “Disturbing the Peace,” which starts with a quote from Audre Lorde and describes how Elaine returned to work from a Christmas vacation from Rwanda for a surprise racial interaction. Her hair was braided into Senegalese twists down her waist—the first time she came to a corporate setting in an overly ethnic hairstyle—and a white female colleague in disbelief asked how her hair had allegedly grown feet over a short amount of time.

This question is sometimes posed to black women who decide to add synthetic or real hair to their braids for a new look to celebrate their heritage, so Elaine took it in stride after an inner dialogue berating the beauty industry for neglecting what is considered beautiful to women of color with telling the woman, “Oh, you of all people must know these are extensions.”

That set the tone for the evening: Elaine describing her humble background in the San Francisco Bay Area as a first-generation college graduate to a high-ranking editor in a magazine media empire. Starting her career in the beginning of the recession, she said she felt the weight of being “black, young, and female,” the trifecta of the media industry teeming with racism, ageism, and sexism.

“We all live in a 180-character world where we are scrolling each other’s success stories every day, and we’re only getting the shiny slice, we’re only getting the prettiest picture, we’re only getting the clearest caption,” she said. “I felt like I owed this community more than I can fit into a caption on Instagram about the most universal aspects of the success story. The parts that get left out from the messy relationships that so often intercept with how we show up in our careers.”

At 32, she said she feared her audience would doubt she was ready to write a memoir, even as her own brother echoed this sentiment soon after she submitted a manuscript questioning her reason to pen an “autobiography.”

“I wanted to throw the plate in his face,” she said of the interaction over a Christmas vacation while he was washing dishes in the kitchen. “I was so emotional because that was the very question that threatened to keep me from doing this and leave it to be my family—it’s always family—that are your harshest critics. At the time, I was so emotional I can only think to say, ‘They don’t even call it autobiographies anymore, you asshole!'”

A round of laughter erupted from the audience, but she continued with the true translation of that moment.

“Then later I really sat with it. I don’t blame my brother for asking that question. That’s the patriarchy talking. We’ve all been conditioned by this mindset that tells us, ‘Your stories are not valid if you look like me.'”

The two-hour event brought up more gems from Elaine’s book like her decision to attend a state university because the boy she was dating was supposed to be there but turned out to be in jail and how on her first Ebony photo shoot she had a serendipitous moment with the hairstylist who happened to be friends with her aunt.

Eso Won Books, the main black-owned bookstore in Los Angeles, was the official bookseller at the event.

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Author Event: Laura Dave, Robinne Lee and Gretchen Bonaduce for National Reading Group Month

The Women’s National Book Association Los Angeles chapter held its annual Great Group Reads event at Skylight Books last week to ring in National Reading Group Month. Along with the announcement of the books we as an organization designated as must-reads over the next year, our chapter welcomed three notable authors to share how they navigated the imperfect road to publication.

The author of best-selling Hello, Sunshine and Eight Hundred Grapes, Laura Dave said though she has several novels now under her belt she had lost her first book to a liquid spill on her laptop. Only the first chapter was backed up. Despite the pitfall, she started over with a new novel while juggling 15 gigs at the time.

Also on the panel was Robinne Lee, an actress recognizable for her roles in the Fifty Shades of Grey series and Seven Pounds, who is experiencing debut novel success with The Idea of You. The top-ranking “romance” novel took her 15 months to complete. How did she do it? She said she lugged her laptop everywhere from movie sets to Starbucks, taking advantage of every free moment to write.

Former celebrity wife and reality star Gretchen Bonaduce gained fame from being married to Danny Bonaduce of Partridge Family fame. So when she decided to write a memoir after people told her she could tell her story in comical way, she said it was hard to get published. Like a lot of writers, she said she didn’t realize the amount of rejection she would see. Weighed down by rejection, she said she looked for alternative ways to publish her book and found an indie publisher for Surviving Agent Orange: And Other Things I Learned From Being Thrown Under the Partridge Family Bus.

The major takeaways from this event:

  • Back up your work – Use programs such as Google Drive to keep your work in the cloud in case your computer or flash drive go missing. Also, save on your computer and flash drive. Have a “receptacle” document or program where you can place extra chunks of work for later or keep notes, then back that up, too.
  • Carve out time – Within your busy schedule, see if there’s a block of time you can take for yourself to write. Anywhere from half an hour and up every day or a few times a week can propel your novel. Treat this time like it’s a fixed class or job, so you can stick with it. When it’s not sticking anymore, change it. Writing time might not be fixed with changing every week, but carve out the time ahead of the week to drop in it into your schedule.
  • Look for alternative avenues – Querying can mean a mountain of rejections. Some authors keep going no matter what while other authors look for indie publishing and self-publishing options. With more and more authors taking advantage of self-publishing models through outlets such as Amazon.com, the traditional route may not be ideal for every author.

WNBA-LA organizes events featuring great women authors who luckily reside in the Los Angeles area. What’s so great about these events is that authors share their adventures and misadventures of trying to get their work out there in the world. These pearls of wisdom could be enhanced with actually interacting with the authors in person, more personal than social media exchanges. Follow @wnba_la on Instagram and @WNBA_LA on Twitter.

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Book Launch: ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng

With so many concerts going on around the LA area Friday night, I decided to look for an event more my pace. Luckily, on Facebook I found Celeste Ng was scheduled to speak and sign books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Her newest novel Little Fires Everywhere had been gaining momentum on the best-seller lists, and since I recently read and enjoyed Everything I Never Told You, I went to the event to get insight on the author’s work and writing process.

In Little Fires Everywhere, a suburban mother is dealing with her house burning down amid her seemingly perfect life and trying to piece together what sparks ignited the blaze. The story takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio — the author’s second hometown — and at the event she spoke about the “metaphorically rich” planned community and how rules shape it. She used the example of how residents couldn’t leave trash cans out on the curb for collection; it was too messy, so the city had golf carts go in the back of residents’ houses to fetch the trash to bring it up the driveway to the truck at the curb.

This fascinated me. In the book jacket, her bio reads she grew up in Shaker Heights — where she said she lived from 10 to college — and Pittsburgh. Recently I had just realized I spent half my childhood in Chicago and the other half in Sacramento. The most recent novel I’m working on surrounds a teenage girl secretly becoming a mermaid at a nightclub in Chicago, but I based the character’s neighborhood on my original neighborhood of Rogers Park that had such an idyllic quality that it didn’t feel like it was in Chicago, and from Celeste’s description maybe more like Shaker Heights. And I too had moved to Sacramento at age 10 up to college. Chicago has more personality, of course, but maybe Northern California suburban living might creep up into a later story.  

Celeste also discussed her writing process and how the idea of her latest novel  germinated in 2009 but the actual writing didn’t come until after 2014’s Everything I Never Told You. So the characters evolved in her head, so she encouraged writers to not be so consumed with how long the story is taking to get on paper and then the long road to being published. She even praised how Sweet Tarts and other candies got her through writing, with a tweet about Sweet Tarts catching the attention of the company that sent her a package. Like many writers, she worked at home, the library, and cafes, which felt inspiring since it felt like I could create a great novel though I spent so much time writing it in all the same places near me.

The event drew a packed room with about 75 or so people braving rush hour traffic. I bought the hardcover book and got it signed, but I choked when I met her because I wanted to tell her about my author aspirations. Sometimes, I can get my words out when meeting authors quickly at book signings and sometimes not, but she was polite and I’m looking forward to reading the novel soon. 

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Author Event: Jade Chang and Natashia Deón

Meeting two authors in one night is an amazing treat, but when they drop knowledge, it’s even more amazing. That knowledge: build your reputation as a writer before your work comes out.

Jade Chang of The Wangs vs. The World and Natashia Deón of Grace spoke together at a Women’s National Book Association meeting last Wednesday night at Skylight Books in Los Angeles.

At the event, the authors dove into what inspired them to write their novels and how being a woman writer — especially women of color writers — affected their work. They spoke about their past experiences and how it took them both about eight years to get to the finish line for their debut novels. 

It turned out they both completed the same fellowship. After the talk, I went up to Chang to tell her how much I adored her book, which I had conveniently finished earlier in the day. Then I went to Deón to buy her book since my daily attempts to win a Goodreads giveaway seemed to be fruitless.

They suggested applying for the literary fellowships that would be convenient to your life, e.g. you can keep your day job if necessary, to learn about the publishing industry and how to navigate it. If you don’t have a masters in fine arts in creative writing, these fellowships can help lessen the barriers of entering the publishing industry.