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Cuffing Season Is Writing Season

SHE LIT: Cuffing Season Is Writing Season 🔏

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Celebrate National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month by reading works from these authors đź“š

Photo by Element5 Digital: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-book-from-shelf-1370298/

As the weather gets colder, writers start to cuff themselves to their own book projects

“Cuffing season” is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary describing how single people find a partner and attach themselves to that partner to stay warm during the colder months. Well, writers are doing the same thing, except cuffing themselves to new writing projects.

I recently completed the Black Creatives Revisions Workshop with We Need Diverse Books, the nonprofit organization working alongside the publishing industry to diversify the industry on the publisher level and the creator level. The summer-long workshop included monthly discussions with successful traditionally published authors and literary agents of color and meetings with Black editors to help us hone our manuscripts.

For the workshop, I had put forth my most promising project: a social justice, historical fiction, young adult novel. I came up with the idea for the book in February 2020, and when that weekend in mid-March that year came along with warnings to stay inside, I began researching and writing with all the time I was forced to hunker down to avoid contracting the unpredictable COVID-19.

Now with the manuscript on its way to industry insiders, I can start querying agents and outlining the next book. Like thousands of writers around the world, I usually spend October plotting a book in anticipation for National Novel Writing Month in November. Known as NaNoWriMo, the movement that interferes with Thanksgiving plans motivates us writers to craft 50,000 words within the month to call ourselves “winners.” That means laser focus. I win almost every year—I “lost” in 2016, traumatized by the presidential election.

That being said, I’m spending most of my days after I clock out of my real job, wrapped up in my blanket on my loveseat with my laptop. Cozying up to my next book. Also cozying up with a published book, or two, or three, or five. The to-be-read list never goes down, despite all these efforts.

With the slower months, content on shelit.com may come out slower. This newsletter will take hiatus in November aka NaNoWriMo. But hopefully the book and book-to-screen selections below will entertain us enough to keep us warm during the seasons like a piping pumpkin spice latte.

she lit editor + chief content creator

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What we’re highlighting

Well-Read Black Girl opening festival, chapter in D.C.

The preeminent festival celebrating Black female authors and readers is heading to Washington, D.C. this year. The Well Read Black Girl Festival has tickets on sale now for the Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 event. Tricia Hersey, the founder of The Nap Ministry, will be the keynote speaker discussing her new book, Rest Is Resistance, forthcoming from Hachette Book Group’s Little, Brown Spark. The book club is also starting a new chapter in D.C.

Jada Pinkett Smith to write memoir on road to Hollywood

Actress, musician, and host of Red Table Talk Jada Pinkett Smith plans to release her memoir with Dey Street Books next year. The book will cover her journey dealing with suicidal depression to tapping into her “authentic feminine power,” according to media reports. The publisher says Jada will touch on growing up in Baltimore to drug-addicted parents, becoming a theater kid with promise, and breaking out into Hollywood with her friend Tupac Shakur before marrying one of the biggest stars, Will Smith, and starting her own family and path of self-discovery.

Celebrity-helmed book clubs select October picks

  • Amerie’s Book Club is reading The Attic Child by Lola Jaye

  • GMA Book Club is reading Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

  • Noname Book Club is reading by Solitary by Albert Woodfox

  • Phenomenal Book Club is reading Jackal by Erin E. Adams

  • Read With Jenna is reading The Whalebone Theater by Joanna Quinn

  • Reese’s Book Club is reading Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Kick back and chill with these fresh book-to-TV shows, films

What we’re reviewing

"The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School" by Sonora Reyes

Carrie Soto Is Back and the Problem of White Authors Creating Main Characters of Color

What we’re reading

Tamera Mowry-Housley Describes How Making Friends Is Like Drinking Wine

Celeste Ng Says Latest Novel Incorporates Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, Book Banning

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Want your book and bookish news to be featured? Write us at shewrites@shelit.com.

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We Need Diverse Books Stops Using #OwnVoices Term

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The nonprofit initiative to have more children’s books reflect all identities in the literary industry says it will no longer use the #OwnVoices hashtag.

We Need Diverse Books announced Sunday that it has scrubbed mentions of the #OwnVoices hashtag from its website posts and plan to identify authors and their characters specifically by their race, ethnicity, religion, ability, sexual orientation, and gender.

The term #OwnVoices became an industry standard when fantasy and sci-fi young adult novelist Corinne Duyvis suggested the hashtag on Twitter in September 2015 to label kidlit work by mostly non-White authors writing about characters that share their identity. It has evolved into a mainstay in the book Twitterverse, particularly as a preferred hashtag in pitch parties such as #PitMad and #DVPit where authors query their books in 280 characters to attract literary agents. Many literary agents still ask for the term to be included in subject lines for authors who are querying their work via email.

“I’m thrilled that #ownvoices has taken on its own life in the years since then,” Corinne writes on her website. “It’s easy shorthand for a necessary concept, and the hashtag is filled with brilliant recommendations, questions, and discussions. That’s awesome. I’m happy to [sic] for the Tweets above to be the extent of my involvement, as the hashtag has been doing just fine without my input; I don’t want to moderate or regulate the discussion in any way.”

We Need Diverse Books says the term was never supposed to grow into an industry marketing “catchall.”

“Using #OwnVoices in this capacity raises issues due to the vagueness of the term, which has then been used to place diverse creators in uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situations,” the organization writes. “It is important to use the language that authors want to celebrate about themselves and their characters.”