News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff.
NOTE on paywalls: Publisher’s Weekly and The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post have paywalls, but allow a small number of free articles per month.
Literary Losses
Nikki Giovanni, the acclaimed Black poet, writer, and activist, died Monday from lung cancer; she was 81. Giovanni’s poetry, children’s books, and outspoken activism earned her numerous honors and accolades throughout her lifetime, including the Rosa L. Parks Women of Courage Award, the Presidential Medal of Honor, and a number of NAACP Image Awards.
Born in 1943, Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. (nicknamed Nikki) earned her B.A. in history at Fisk University, an HBCU, then went on to study poetry at Columbia University School for the Arts. In 1969, the same year she gave birth to her only son, Giovanni began teaching at Rutgers University. Through her publishing company, NikTom, she published her own work as well as that of other Black women writers. She made regular appearances on TV whilst continuing to write and publish her poetry and children’s books. In 1987, she began teaching at Virginia Tech, where she remained until her retirement in 2022.
Obituaries and tributes: The Guardian; New York Times; NPR; Washington Post. Bibliography and Biography: Goodreads; Wikipedia
Bookish News
- New Jersey Delivers a Victory for the Freedom to Read—and for Librarians (Publishers Weekly)
- Strike Ends at the Strand [Bookstore] as Union, Management Reach Agreement (Publishers Weekly)
- [British] Society of Authors calls for celebrity memoir ghostwriters to be credited (The Guardian)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Romantasy All Along! In the light of the recent rise of “Romantasy” as a genre, indie author Tansy Raynor Roberts examines the history of romance+fantasy and fantasy+romance. Yes, indeed, romantasy has been there all along. (Uncanny)
- ‘It’s got everything you want, plus dragons’: Brandon Sanderson on the joy of writing fantasy (The Guardian)
AI (“artificial intelligence”)
- UCLA’s new AI-designed literature course has the worst-looking textbook cover I’ve ever seen. (Literary Hub)
Lists
- Your 2024 Guide to (Mostly) Bookish Holiday Gifts (Book Riot): A list of lists
- Holiday Romance Novels to Make Your December Merry and Bright (Sarah Wendell, New York Times, unlocked)
- 17 of the Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Books of 2024 (Literary Hub)
Lory @ Entering the Enchanted Castle
What is this nonsense literature course? Nerniacular Latin? Lgugar Lanilan? How can people fall for this junk? Language is not a random assemblage of interchangeable phonemes.
On the other hand, yay for the freedom to read. I hope our brains survive to make use of it.
Lory @ Entering the Enchanted Castle recently posted…Nonfiction Reader: The Wicked Boy