Books

Submissions opened October 16th for the 2024 Creative Writing Awards, which come through a collaboration between Big Five publisher Penguin Random House and We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization that advocates for diverse literature. This year will be the first time the Freedom of Expression Award will be granted as part of the awards.

When Renée Watson read her first Ramona Quimby book as a child, she was startled by where Beverly Cleary’s beloved heroine lived: Klickitat Street was just around the corner from Watson’s aunt’s home in Portland, Oregon. “I was so in awe that a character in a book could live in my city and in a

Tiffany D. Jackson is a YA author best known for her books Monday’s Not Coming, Allegedly, and Grown, among others. Her newest book has just been announced, and it’s an original YA novel about the Marvel superhero Storm, titled Storm: Dawn of a Goddess. It will be her first fantasy novel, and it follows Storm

Sam Becker loves—or, okay, likes—his job. Sure, managing a bed and bath retailer isn’t exactly glamorous, but it’s good work and he gets on well with the band of misfits who keep the store running. He could see himself being content here for the long haul. Too bad, then, that the owner is an infuriating

American Fiction, based on Erasure by Percival Everett, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and will have a theatrical release in December. The movie stars Jeffrey Wright as Monk, a novelist frustrated by the kind of stereotypical Black narratives favored in the literary world. As a joke, he writes his own over-the-top

Tan Twan Eng’s third novel, which was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the early 1920s, when the British writer William Somerset Maugham and his secretary (and lover) Gerald Haxton visit the coastal province of Penang, Malaysia, as the guests of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn. Part of Penang’s European elite, Lesley and

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

The world honestly needs more of iconic actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton, and will get just that during the National Book Awards’ 74th award ceremony. Though today’s announcement of Burton hosting is cutting it a bit close to the November 15th date for the black-tie ceremony. The scrambling is because of a last minute

Nobel winning American poet Louise Glück died today, Friday, October 13. She was 80 years old. Glück was the US Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004, and her work explored religion, mythology, and the natural world with deeply personal and autobiographical tones. Her poetry earned not only the Nobel in 2020 for her collection The

Just today, Casey McQuiston announced a new book coming next year. Though McQuiston calls the new romantic comedy “SLUTS IN EUROPE” with friends, the actual title is The Pairing. The author describes it as being about “two gloriously slutty bisexual exes having a transformational three-week reunion tour through France, Spain, and Italy.” If that doesn’t

Salman Rushdie and publisher Penguin Random House announced today that the bestselling novelist will release a memoir about the knife attack he suffered in August 2022 that left him blind in his right eye. The attack happened at the Chautauqua Institution in New York during an event where he was set to speak about how

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

Poet and young adult author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland’s adult debut, Witch of Wild Things, is a story of family legacies and complicated sisterhood, told with romantic and lush magical realism.  For the entirety of Sage Flores’ life, she’s known three things. First, the old gods have no love for Flores women and have thus cursed

What would Hansel and Gretel be like as adults? Kell Woods’ inventive retelling explores the answer to this question, following Hans and Margareta “Greta” Rosenthal as down-on-their-luck German peasants struggling to make a living in a world still recovering from the Thirty Years’ War. Greta has never felt like she fit into Lindenfeld, a little

Most of Tirzah Price’s life decisions have been motivated by a desire to read as many books as humanly possible. Tirzah holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has worked as an independent bookseller and librarian. She’s also the author of the Jane Austen Murder

Kelly Jensen is out this week, so Erica Ezeifedi and I are filling in on censorship news. Unfortunately, none of us can be Kelly, even with our forces combined, so we’re trying something a little different in the censorship news round-up. Instead of one big story and dozens of bullet points, we have each picked