Essays
If you’re interested in reading more of my articles and guests posts on diversity in the children’s publishing industry, click on any of the links below. Interviews can be found under the ABOUT tab.
- Excerpt of “I am Myrtilla’s Daughter,” the 2023 Zena Sutherland Lecture (Horn Book; 12/5/2023)
- “Love Letters to Poetry: Art & Abolition” (Diverse Verse; 4/8/2023)
- “Author Zetta Elliott Reflects on Her Banned Books” (Brightly; 3/7/2022)
- “I Wrote a Fantasy Series to Give Kids the Representation I Wish I Had in Books…” (Mom.com; 2/21/2022)
- “One of My Books Was Banned, but I’m Continuing to Confront Our History…” (Blavity; 12/29/2021)
- “‘At the Mercy or Whim of Others’: Policing Protest in Children’s Publishing” (Horn Book; 8/26/2020)
- “The Process of Rebuilding Begins in Our Imagination” (NCTE blog; 5/30/2020)
- “Zetta Elliott Discusses the ‘Difficult Miracle’ of Black Girl Poets” (School Library Journal; 2/21/2020)
- “How Do We Share Space? Black Women Confronting Colorism” (Medium; 1/20/20)
- “When Writing Fantasy, Black Magic Matters” (The Star, 1/4/19)
- “Dragons, Hybrid Publishing, and Reshaping Reality” (Stephanie Burgis’ blog; 12/10/18)
- “Heal Thyself” (blog; 07/19/18)
- “No More ‘Becky Books’” (blog; 04/25/18)
- “The Wounded Heart Always Heals” (The Book Smugglers; 03/12/18)
- “Nice Is Not Enough” (Crazy Quilt Edi; 11/12/17)
- “I Am Not Beyoncé” (Children & Libraries; Summer 2017)
- “A Talk with Teachers: Revisiting James Baldwin’s Vision for Education” (Medium; 2/8/17)
- “Minstrelsy Is the New Black” (The Book Smugglers’ Quarterly Almanac; January 2017)
- “The Perils of Proximity” (Doris McCarthy Gallery; 1/26/17)
- “Let’s Talk about Reparations: What Does the Publishing Industry Owe Our Kids?” (Embrace Race; 10/22/16)
- “Healing the Child Within” (Embrace Race; 10/4/16)
- “A Girl Like Me” (Diversity in YA; 4/13/16)
- “Finding My Way to the Door at the Crossroads” (The Book Smugglers; 4/7/16)
- “What’s LOVE go to do with it? Self-publishing as a Black feminist act of self-care” (Huffington Post; 4/5/16)
- “Who Will Write a Story for the Children of Eric Garner?” (AALBC; 2/25/16)
- “Where Community Equals Survival: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones vs. Beasts of a Southern Wild” (National Book Foundation; 2/22/16)
- “How It Feels to Be Self-Published Me” (Publishers Weekly; 2/1/16)
- “Don’t Stop Believing” (The Brown Bookshelf; 11/28/15)
- “Black Authors and Self-Publishing” (School Library Journal; 3/16/15)
- “Invisibility Blues” (We Need Diverse Books; 11/17/14)
- “Kid Lit Equality: Fantasy or Reality?” (The Huffington Post; 9/16/14)
- “Self-Publishing Often the Only Recourse for Writers of Color” (Latin@s in Kid Lit; 6/12/14)
- “Making Our Own Market” (The Brown Bookshelf; 5/19/14)
- “It’s Not Me, It’s You: Letting Go of the Status Quo” (The Huffington Post; 5/18/14)
- “When You’re Strange–Part 2” (Media Diversified; 4/4/14)
- “When You’re Strange: Does Canada Damage Black People?” (Media Diversified; 4/2/14)
- “The Diversity Gap” (The Debrief with David Ushery; 2/21/14)
- “About Courage” (Crazy Quilt Edi; 12/23/13)
- “Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, 2” (Fledgling; 12/18/13)
- “Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: a Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens” (Bitch Magazine blog; 12/17/13)
- “5 Things You Can Do to Promote Literacy over the Holidays” (The Huffington Post; 12/16/13)
- “Plunging into the Deep: Black Magic for Black Girls” (The Huffington Post; 11/25/13)
- “Farewell, Coretta” (Fledgling; 1/30/13)
- “Depicting Trauma in African American Picture Books” or “One Hot Mess” (presented 6/14/12 at the Children’s Literature Association conference in Boston, MA)
- “Trayvon–killed by an idea” (The Huffington Post; 5/2/12)
- “Canada’s Black Writers: Achieving Excellence and Avoiding Annihilation” (reprinted in Sway Magazine; 2/21/12)
- “Canada’s Black Writers: Achieving Excellence and Avoiding Annihilation” (Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences blog; 2/2/12)
- “Writing Children’s Books While Feminist and Black” (Ms. Magazine blog; 7/28/11)
- “The Real Value of Free Books” (Behind the Book blog; 7/25/11)
- “Navigating the Great White North: Representing Blackness in Canadian Young Adult Literature” (The Centennial Reader; June 2011)
- “The Bottom of the Pot: Blackness and Be/longing in A Wish After Midnight” (presented 6/23/11 at the Children’s Literature Association conference in Roanoke, VA)
- “Reflecting Reality” (DIPNET blog; 6/7/11)
- “The Ethical Author” (Fledgling; 6/3/11)
- “Achieving Equity in Publishing” (Fledgling; 5/6/11)
- “Unpacking the Past” (Hunger Mountain; 3/25/11)
- “sister/outsider” (Women Doing Literary Things; 3/22/11)
- “A Storied Past” (School Library Journal; 2/1/11)
- “Diversity in YA Lit” (The Book Smugglers; 7/31/10)
- “Giving Up the Myth of Meritocracy” (The Rejectionist; 5/3/10)
- “Numbers don’t lie—do they?” (Fledgling; 4/6/10)
- “Black Canadian children’s literature~the stats” (Fledgling; 4/5/10)
- “‘Ain’t They Black’: Negotiating Blackness and Borders in Canadian Young Adult Literature” (Fledgling; 4/2/10)
- “7 Tips for Self-Published Authors” (The Huffington Post; 3/16/10)
- “Tackling Terrorism in Teen Lit” (The Huffington Post; 3/10/10)
- “Decolonizing the Imagination” (Horn Book; March/April 2010)
- “Demanding Diversity in Publishing” (The Huffington Post; 2/26/10)
- “Breaking Down Doors: My Self-Publishing Story”(The Huffington Post; 2/23/10)
- “Some Preliminary Thoughts on Race and Reviews” (Justine Larbalestier’s blog; 2/18/10)
- “Something Like an Open Letter to the Children’s Publishing Industry”(Fledgling; 9/5/09)
My other scholarly essays may be found here:
- “Opening Up Space for Global Black Girls: A Dialogue between Gabrielle Civil and Zetta Elliott (Departures In Critical Qualitative Research Special Issue: Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths:Exploring the Theory, Praxis, and Creativity of Black Girlhood Studies; forthcoming)
- “I Am Not Beyoncé,” to be published in the Summer 2017 issue of Children and Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children
- “‘All Land Is One Land Under the Sea’: Mapping Memory in Canada and the Caribbean,” published in the Spring 2014 Caribbean Quarterly.
- “The Trouble with Magic: Conjuring the Past in New York City Parks,” published in the Winter 2013 issue of Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. Winner of the 2014 Children’s Literature Association’s Article Award.
- “Blackout in the Great White North: Responding to Racism & Erasure in the Canadian Children’s Publishing Industry,” published in the 2013 issue of Sankofa: a Journal of African Children’s and Young Adult Literature.
- “‘If Rigor Is Our Dream’: The Re-Membering of Violence by Black Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance,” published in the anthology, Imagining the Black Female Body, edited by Dr. Carol E. Henderson (Palgrave, December 2010).
- “Telling Secrets in the City: Narrative Possibility and the Urban Environment,” published in Deep into Nature: Ecology, Environment and Children’s Literature edited by Jennifer Harding, Elizabeth Thiel, and Alison Waller (Pied Piper Publishing, UK; Fall 2009).
- “Writing the Black (W)hole: Facing the Feminist Void,” published in the January 2006 issue of thirdspace, an online feminist journal.
- “Writing the Unspoken, Framing the Unseen: Witnessing the Past in Contemporary Novels of Slavery,” WarpLand: a Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2005.
- “A Stranger in the Family,” Black Arts Quarterly, a publication of Stanford University’s Committee on Black Performing Arts, Winter 2005.