In censorship news (a phrase I hated writing, just for the record), The Poet X, the award-winning YA novel by Elizabeth Acevedo, is the subject of a lawsuit. Parents of a North Carolina charter school student have complained that that book, a coming-of-age story about a Latina teenager who finds comfort in poetry as she navigates her rapidly changing world, is “anti-Christian.” The parents have “asked the federal courts to remove the book from their child’s classroom.” In talking about fiction can change and shape our worldviews, Acevedo told the Atlantic in 2019, ” I can tell who reads fiction. […] I can tell which of them have read things that don’t look like them or sound like them or depict who they come from. You know.”
Congratulations to Joanne Hichens! Her book, Death and the After Parties (Karavan Press) is out (well almost). Her memoir of grief, recovery, and “the mainstays of life – friendship, family, and the memories of those we love and lose” releases on November 2! We’re proud to be the US publisher for Joanne’s thriller Divine Justice, which releases in January 2021.
Love comics? Love small presses? Good day for you, then. Here’s a great story at Atlas Obscura about Lion-Muthu Comics, an Indian press made up of “a four-person team translates Italian, French, and English comics into [Tamil], a language spoken by 70 million people.” Continue reading “This Week in Literary News: Week of October 25”
