Quick hits on a couple of resources

Deberry/Grant - the two-woman writing team - has a new book out, Gotta Keep on Tryin'. It's the sequel to their first novel.

And on their blog, they referenced Connie Briscoe's blog - which is fabulous! She is interviewing authors and publicists. Recent interviews include Deberry/Grant, Lolita Files (who also has a blog) and Connie writes about writing. Go see - and bookmark it.

An unfinished work by Richard Wright has been pieced together and published. Tayari Jones says - leave dead authors' work alone.

Here's the review of the book, A Father's Law, from the NYTimes.

And from the review:

But context is one thing; text is another. In this case, text threatens to ambush context before context even gets to town. “A Father’s Law” is not simply an unfinished novel; it is an unfinished novel in abject need of revision. Its flaws are so many and so foregrounded that they all but dare the reader to work through them and engage the ideas with which Wright was grappling. Without having first read his thunderous classics, one might plausibly dismiss this author as a tendentious, technically naïve amateur and disdain the works that made him indispensable in American letters.

This and that

Mark Sarvas posted a link to an article in the Los Angeles Wave about African American authors, serious literature and the important role Black booksellers and independent publishers play in promoting our authors. Rosie Milligan, founder of Black Writers on Tour, and James Fugate of Eso Won books are quoted.
Read it here: Extending their shelf lives

Want more on the concerns about serious Black literature and street lit?

Check out the notes from the ringshout group - a new group that launched this year.

Their members have been writing about it, including Bridgett Davis' essay on theroot.com - which I haven't read yet, but will.

Thanks to Eisa Ulen for the links - she is a ringshout founder as well.

Promotion find of the day

I saw a reference recently to a site, www.bookmovement.com, that I hadn't heard of in all my trolling for book-related stuff. So I'm sharing it in case you haven't heard of it either.

Book Movement is a site for book clubs and allows clubs and members to list and rank the books that they're reading. So the site turns that into lists of the popular books among book clubs.

I searched a couple of African American authors names - by no means an exhaustive list, just a casual search.
Here's what I found on the site - titles by:
Pearl Cleage
Christopher Abani
Alice Walker
Carl Weber
Anthony Grooms
Walter Mosley

I didn't see anyway for authors to feed in to the system - other than paying for featured placement. But perhaps it would be a tool worth mentioning to fans in book clubs.

Quick hits from the last few days

NYTimes Review of Race Card by Richard Thompson Ford. Subtitle: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.
From my quick read of the review, it sounds like the book is worth reading - though I am getting a bit of a conservative vibe from it. I'm working on doing more nonfiction reading and less escaping from reality, so perhaps this makes it to the to-be-read list.

A group of newspaper cartoonists are banding together to do strips on one topic this Sunday - the lack of diversity in newspaper comics. Read more in the Washington Post.

I went to John Ridley's blog on NPR.org for the first time today. And then went over to their NPR mobile set up - NPR content on your phone - that made me happier than I should admit.

Did you know that NPR has a "Race" page? Neither did I. Here it is.