5/14 EVENT: Elizabeth Alexander Gives Talk on The Light of the World - Chicago

Award winning poet, professor and memoirist Elizabeth Alexander is scheduled to give a talk on her recent release, The Light of the World (2015, Grand Central Publishing) at Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago.  

Elizabeth will discuss her memoir, which transforms the unexpected death of her husband into a compelling, heartfelt work of art. The event will take place on Thursday, May 14, 2015 from 6:30 - 7:30 pm.

AWARDS: Digest by Gregory Pardlo Wins the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

Congratulations to poet Gregory Pardlo who was recently awarded the covetous Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 2014 collection, Digest (Four Way Books)!

About the Poet

Gregory Pardlo is the author of Totem, which received the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007, and Digest, (Four Way Books, 2014), which was nominated for the 2015 NAACP Image Award in poetry. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, and Tin House, as well as anthologies including Angles of Ascent, the Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, and two editions of Best American Poetry. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a fellowship for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. An Associate Editor of Callaloo, he is currently a Teaching Fellow in Undergraduate Writing at Columbia University.

5/17 EVENT: We Need Diverse Books YA Author Panel in Austin

Book People in Austin, TX presents:

WE NEED DIVERSE BOOKS!

And we need them NOW! Join us this afternoon as five YA authors are here to discuss diversity in YA literature. I. W. Gregorio, Natalie C. Parker, Sona Charaipotra, Dhonielle Clayton and Marike Nijkamp will all be here to talk about their novels, their writing processes, and why we need more books that reflect the big, beautiful, dynamic world we all share. Austin author Cynthia Leitich Smith will moderate the conversation. We Need Diverse Books™ is a grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people. We're honored to host an official WNDB event and cannot wait to welcome these fantastic authors to BookPeople!

After the public event, the authors will host a writing workshop here at BookPeople. Space for the workshop is limited. RSVP as soon as you can.

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NEW RELEASE! Cake Literary presents TINY PRETTY THINGS

The New School MFA in Creative Writing Program, my alma mater, has cultivated a cadre of talented children's writers who have stopped at nothing to be leaders in the genre of young adult and middle grade fiction.  Within this list of talented and prolific children's writers who are alums of the New School Writing for Children program include: Tonya Hegamin, Jenny Han, Caela Carter, Coe Booth and now Cake Literary founders Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton (class of 2012).  

I met both Sona and Dhonielle at The New School during a children's literature workshop we took with YA author and Scholastic editor, David Levithan.
Sona and Dhonielle have done much to bring issues in children's publishing to the forefront in recent years, particularly within the We Need Diverse Books movement.

The duo is now set to release their first project, a young adult novel TINY PRETTY THINGS, after founding CAKE Literary, a literary development company.

The Jumbies are COMING! NEW RELEASE by Tracey Baptiste

I met fellow children's writer, Tracey Baptiste at the First Annual Kweli Children's Book Writers Conference in New York City earlier this year.  She's a writer with great energy, and like many of us, is on a mission to add diversity to the world of children's books.  I wish to congratulate Tracey on the release of THE JUMBIES.  She will have a second book launch event on Thursday, April 30, 2015 at La Casa Azul Bookstore from 6-8pm. 

Check out reviews of The Jumbies:

“Endlessly addictive and hypnotic.” —Essence Magazine 

“This girl’s got guts . . . Corrine La Mer brings badassery and wisdom beyond her years. Launching brave kids into the world of the horror novel, and leading them through it with lyrical prose, author Tracey Baptiste knows just how to seize kids’ attention.”—Foreword Reviews

“It’s refreshing to see a fantasy with its roots outside Europe . . . this is a book worth reading simply for its originality.”—Kirkus Reviews