BookCon 2015 Is Off To A Good Start With Partnership & Author Announcements
Breaking news: @ReedPop and @diversebooks partnering, @JackieWoodson and @Sherman_Alexie named two featured authors at #BookCon2015.
— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) December 11, 2014
Publisher’s Weekly tweeted this out this morning. After the disastrous lack of diverse authors at last year’s BookCon which sparked the creation of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks hashtag and subsequent organization, it seems like BookCon has learned from its past mistake. Not only is the con partnering with We Need Diverse Books but it has also named Jacqueline Woodson (recent National Book Award winner for Brown Girl Dreaming) and Sherman Alexie (author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) as its featured authors. That’s what I call a stellar comeback.
The Torture Book We Always Wanted? CIA Torture Report To Become Book
Melville House is an independent publishing house that has just announced its plans to give us the bound version of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” report.
The report, made public December 9, details and condemns the interrogation techniques employed by the CIA in the years following the September 11, terror attacks. The report was called by the New York Times “a portrait of depravity that is hard to comprehend and even harder to stomach.”
– via Publisher’s Weekly
This will make access to the report easier for the regular person perusing their local bookstore but in the meantime, the report is also available free online.
Record-Breaking Vlogger, Zoella, Had Ghostwriter Help With Book
Our very own Claire has written about the subject. My thoughts? The brand of Youtubers is authenticity. Zoella wasn’t very authentic when she wasn’t upfront about her ghostwriter. That’s the issue. Maybe some re-branding is in order….
A Call For More YA Books To Be Set In The Middle East
Books are a great way to learn about the world around us so it’s surprising (but also not surprising) that we haven’t seen that much YA set in or about the conflicts in the Middle East. Kerry Drewery (author of A Brighter Fear) discusses this in her Guardian piece but I should also add that books should be diverse in general. That’s why we were having this big discussion in 2014 and will continue to do so in 2015. We can’t be ignorant of the world we live.
Prison Book Ban Ruled Unlawful
I can write a lot on this subject but I’ll let Claire take the reins.
Other News:
Lost (But Recently Found) Ayn Rand Book To Be Published
A Very British Proposal: “Google Tax” Being Proposed by British Government
