spotlight

Reading at Franklin Park on Monday night was a little surreal; the lamp next to the table is angled in such a way that you can see your book but can’t see anyone in the audience, so you’re sort of reading “blind.” When I present before kids, I’m used to making eye contact and reading the audience almost as much as I’m reading my book. But I couldn’t read the crowd at Franklin Park and my opening “Good evening” got no response. So it was gratifying when three or four people came up at the end to say that they’d appreciated my reading and my preamble—a rambling introduction where I talked about some of the challenges facing people of color in this country right now. It feels rather self-indulgent to hang out in a bar and read to folks who are drinking, and laughing, and ordering food. The Franklin Parkers are serious about literature, though, and I definitely felt like people were listening even if I couldn’t see their faces. I felt very geeky and dashed off at the end, but lingered to talk to the curator Penina about the state of publishing. We have a lot of work to do! But Penina’s one of those rare White women in the lit community who’s always trying to bring more folks in and keep the door open.

I’m working on that reparations essay once more; I head to Cincinnati tomorrow and for some reason the flight takes up most of the day, so I plan to use all that air(port) time to write. I’m psyched that Maya and Matthew over at Reflection Press have launched their new IndieGoGo campaign for which they developed this amazing graphic:

Some folks like to celebrate “the next Walter Dean Myers” or the latest award-winner who happens to be a person of color. But look at what we really need to achieve equality and justice in the kid lit community—and this is just the number of books. How can we ensure their quality when the industry remains dominated by straight White cisgender women who don’t have disabilities? So much work to be done…we’ll be talking about these issues during our panel for Books by the Banks so if you’re near Cincinnati, do drop in. Our panel starts at 11:30am on Saturday and then (hopefully) I’ll be signing copies of Melena’s Jubilee afterward. Then it’s back to Brooklyn for a couple of days and off to IL for the Youth Lit Fest! Grateful for these opportunities to travel but also looking forward to a couple of weeks at home in November. I need to write! (novels, not essays)