A More Diverse Universe 2015

Today is the first day of the third annual #Diversiverse, hosted by Aarti of BookLust.

So what is #Diversiverse?  It is a two-week celebration of speculative fiction by authors who are not white.  Bloggers read these books, write reviews, and then link to them at the round-up post.

The goal is to help people understand the truth of this statement:
Reading diversely may require you to change your book finding habits.  It ABSOLUTELY does not require you to change your book reading habits.

Reading more diversely does not require you to change what kind of books you like.  You can keep on keeping on, because authors of all sorts write books of all sorts.  Hopefully, #Diversiverse will help you find some of those books more easily.

Celebrating Jacqueline Woodson, and matching donations to #weneeddiversebooks

Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for BROWN GIRL DREAMING, a memoir in verse.  I'm not a memoir fan, but I've heard nothing but good things and intend to read it after the Cybils are over.

However, her win was overshadowed by remarks made by the presenter, Daniel Handler.  (Also known as Lemony Snicket.)

His first apology acknowledged that he'd taken the moment away from her.

This morning he made a second apology acknowledging that his remarks were racist.  He again acknowledged that the conversation about the National Book Awards should be about the books.

Therefore, he is donating $10,000 to #weneeddiverse books and matching donations up to $100,000 made in the next 24 hours since his tweet.

Let’s donate to #WeNeedDiverseBooks to #CelebrateJackie. I’m in for $10,000, and matching your money for 24 hours up to $100,000. -DH [3/4[

He closed by reiterating Jacqueline Woodson's achievement, as he should.

So let's celebrate Jacqueline Woodson's win for BROWN GIRL DREAMING and help support diversifying the publishing industry and texts in classrooms by donating to We Need Diverse Books.  You can donate to their IndieGogo here.  For $75, you can #CelebrateJackie and get a signed copy of BROWN GIRL DREAMING.