Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 34

highlights

I meant to start my sugar detox today but woke up this morning wanting to try the maple syrup gifted to me by the Minnesota Humanities Society (along with some beautiful books published by community groups). So I made pancakes for breakfast and then went to Starbucks in the afternoon and got some of the chocolate-covered biscuits I ate every other night while I was away (there was a Starbucks in the hotel lobby). It rained all day so I didn’t make it to the park, and that means I haven’t gone for a run in over a week. Travel always disrupts my routine, and sometimes that’s a good thing; I need to be pushed, otherwise I stay inside my comfort zone and end up in a rut. My week in the Twin Cities was full—a campus talk, five school visits, and a couple of other public events. The introvert in me was worried about having the social stamina to make it through each day, but I realized that it’s possible to feel exhausted and invigorated at the same time! I usually got back to the hotel in the evening with a full head and heart, which means I didn’t sleep well because I didn’t write while I was away. I can’t remember everything that happened, but I was struck by certain moments and interactions, so will try to record those now. I arrived Tuesday afternoon and that evening Prof. Sarah Park Dahlen hosted a fantastic event at St. Kate’s; her MLIS students and colleagues helped us to have a really substantive conversation. Sarah also revealed the new kid lit graphic she commissioned, which is great—I used it in my book talks last week and the students really responded to the mirrors diminishing in size and number as you move from the White child over to the Native child. You can read about the team Sarah assembled and download your own copy of the graphic here. I met a lot of wonderful future librarians that evening, but I was struck by one grad who came up to tell me that reading A Wish After Midnight meant a lot to him because at the time he was preparing to come out and he really identified with Genna’s journey and her struggle to be seen as her authentic self. I tend to simplify the mirror metaphor when I’m talking to kids, so we don’t always talk about the many different ways you can identify with a character and see yourself reflected in a book. But it means a lot to me when Genna’s story resonates with a wide range of people. The next morning I was taken to Bancroft Elementary School; they co-sponsored my week in MN and I met with their three 4th-grade classes. School culture is important and as soon as I entered Bancroft, I noticed a difference in tone. All the schools I visited in MN were fairly quiet (compared to NYC schools) but the mindfulness training for students and staff there created a really unique experience. When one child asked me to name my favorite food, before I could even answer a girl with beautifully hennaed hands blurted out, “Cake!” How did she know?! That afternoon my two hosts from Umbra & the Givens Collection of African American Literature took me to Gordon Parks HS; most of the students left when the bell rang halfway through my presentation, but six or seven stayed and we had an excellent conversation about Black masculinity/fragility and the need for more stories about the Black Lives Matter movement. The teens in the Twin Cities are definitely “woke!” The next day I was taken to Lucy Laney Elementary School by one of my other hosts, Chaun Webster. Chaun runs Ancestry Books and his kids attend that school so we got a warm welcome followed by a tour. Then I presented for two groups of second graders. I don’t have much experience working with kids that age, but they were wonderful and very excited to meet an author for the first time. When I talked about teaching a little girl whose mother was in prison, almost two-thirds of the kids raised their hands to tell me about their family member who was also incarcerated. We don’t have enough mirror books to adequately reflect the many realities of these kids…

That afternoon Sarah picked me up and took me to Maplewood MS where I presented one and a half times for 7th and 8th grade students. One asked me how much I earn as an author and I told her about half of what I once earned as a professor ($70K). I thought about that later and wondered if I should have kept that information to myself. I’m generally for greater transparency in publishing, and don’t want to give the impression that I’m “living large” when most of the time I’m hustling to make ends meet. But the hustle is worthwhile—I left the academy because it no longer gave me the time I need to dream and write. The past two years haven’t been easy, but I’m blessed to have friends and colleagues who value what I have to offer and I’m always honored when they bring me out to meet the members of their communities. I’ll have to finish blogging about my trip tomorrow—time to catch up on some of the sleep I lost by ruminating endlessly last week…

 

jitters & joy

I’m packing for Minnesota! It’s cooler out there so I’m looking forward to autumn weather after our hot and humid week here in Brooklyn. Books are taking up half the space in my suitcase, plus I’ll have a carry-on full of books for the school visits that have been scheduled for the next five days (I’m super grateful that my publisher offered to ship a box containing copies of Melena’s Jubilee). I always get anxious before I travel but that just prompts me to over-organize. I’ll stop at the copy shop this afternoon and then I can hopefully come home, relax, and write for a little while. It’s such an honor to be invited anywhere because indie authors are generally left out of the “official” kid lit loop. But it’s especially gratifying when your hosts go to so much trouble to build community around your visit; I’m not the only one doing what I do, and so I’m really looking forward to meeting other writers, activists, scholars, and students who are fighting to change the arts landscape in the Twin Cities. I’ll be in public schools most days (Lucy Laney Elementary School, Bancroft Elementary School, Gordon Parks High School, Vadnais Heights Elementary School, and Maplewood Middle School). Below are my public events; if you’re in or near the Twin Cities, I hope you’ll join us!

Inclusivity and Indie Authors: The Case for Community-Based Publishing

Hosted by the St. Catherine University Master of Library and Information Science Program and its American Library Association Student Chapter, Progressive Librarians Guild, and Student Governance Organization & Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen (pictured above)

Tuesday September 13 @ 7:00 pm

St. Catherine University – Mendel 106

2004 Randolph Ave.

St. Paul, MN 55105

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1576818495957311/

Flyer: ZettaElliott-StKatesMLISProgram-Flyer

Inclusivity and Indie Authors: The Case for Community-Based Publishing

(This is “Everyone Has a Story to Tell”–a writing workshop, not the same as the talk above)

Hosted by Ancestry Books & the Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy

Friday, September 16 @ 10:00 am

Lucy Laney Elementary

3333 Penn Ave N

Minneapolis, MN 55412

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

Facebook (please RSVP): https://www.facebook.com/events/187857264966279/

Zetta Elliott Reading & Panel Discussion on Elevating Absent Narratives

Panelists include R. Vincent Moniz Jr., Shalini Gupta, Andrea Jenkins, Sarah Park Dahlen, and Junauda Alma. With moderator Chaun Webster.

Saturday, September 17 @ 7:00 pm

The Loft Literary Center

1011 S Washington Ave

Minneapolis, MN 55415

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/312269269124828/

 

coming up!

Next week I’ll be heading to Minnesota and I can’t wait! I’ll blog more about that in a couple of days, but you can find my schedule of public events here. When I get back, I’ll be giving a presentation at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the NYPL. I’ve only got a couple of local school visits scheduled so far, but I’ll be traveling to Illinois for Youth Lit Fest and Cincinnati for Books by the Banks next month, and then I’ll be in Atlanta for NCTE in November. I’m hoping to have Milo’s Museum done in time for the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC; all the sketches are done so stay tuned because I’ll post Purple Wong’s color illustrations over the coming weeks. We have a mini-heatwave here in NYC but fall is coming…I can feel it in the air!

Exploring the Mark of Noba

“Sistas are doin’ it for themselves.” This could be the mantra of Afro-Latinx twins Libertad and Guinevere Tomas, who read, review, write, and publish inclusive YA lit. Their second book, The Unforgettables, is slated for release on September 12th. After reading their impressive debut, The Mark of Noba, I had some questions for these inspiring young women and Libertad kindly took the time to respond:

A call of souls. Union of power. Transcendent of time.

Sterling Wayfairer has one goal for his senior year: make his mark. But things don’t go as planned when he starts to encounter his mysterious classmate Tetra. Tetra not only has answers to the recent disappearances, but Sterling will soon find that making his mark isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sterling discovers he shares a spiritual bond with Tetra,and that only their power has the ability to stop the malevolent evil they face. They must work together or risk the destruction of their world.

I’m really interested in your publishing process–have you started your own imprint?


We have started our own imprint. It was something we knew from the start we wanted to do since we have a ton of books in us. It was just best to “brand” ourselves from the very beginning. My sister and I have had this one idea in our head that’s sort of like an Afro-futuristic dystopia where the leaders of the world are based on Valkyries. When we first thought of Valkyries, we sort of thought of them as “good guys” so in this particular story we made them villains or Rebellious Valkyries. I think we connected to that term because we felt like it described the two of us when it comes to the message we try to put out there. We try to be original and break free from the mold of what everyone else is doing. The name just sort of stuck after that.

How do you develop ideas and co-write?

Well, in terms of developing ideas, currently none of our ideas are really new. They’re just ideas that have been in our heads for years that we just managed to fine tune before the published product. I think the unique thing about our development process is that, for the most part, we don’t come up with ideas jointly. An idea comes to [Guinevere] and she sits on it for a little while before approaching me with it. The same goes for me. We tend to develop the ideas that have the most to work with.

The Mark of Noba was Guinevere’s initial idea (my sister is a bigger speculative fiction fan than I am) so when she presented me with it, we figured out ways we could both contribute. Usually that means streamlining an outline and then assigning each other chapters to work on. It probably wouldn’t work for everyone, but it works for us. We have an advantage being twins. She barely has to explain anything to me before I understand the picture and message she’s trying to convey. It’s a twin thing, lol.


With our next project being YA contemporary (much more my preference to work on), I have to admit, it was my initial idea and it had been floating inside my head for almost eleven years. I wasn’t even interested in bringing it to the masses until my sister stumbled across an ancient draft that had to be like seven years old and convinced me to rework it. I’m sure if she hadn’t, it’d still be sitting in our own little slush pile. For that reason it’s great to have a writing partner. Many times we push each other and since we’re close, we’re not afraid to admit to each other when something isn’t working.

Do you use Wattpad or other digital platforms to preview your novels?

For The Mark of Noba we did. Wattpad was the only platform we were super consistent with. Inkitt was another one but Wattpad worked the best because it has the most engagement. People are constantly leaving comments and providing feedback, especially teenagers. And applying to have your story featured makes people more aware of your work. I wouldn’t waste my time on Inkitt, or at least not over Wattpad. It was awesome to get feedback from teen readers since, for the most part, they formed the majority of the readers that loved and commented on the book. I’d definitely do it again for a future book. Speculative fiction definitely does the best on there!

How do you square the #ownvoices mandate with your decision to have a white male protagonist?


When we first came up with this project, the #ownvoices call to action didn’t exist at the time and when the initial idea came to Guinevere, Sterling and Tetra had equal storytelling roles in the book. But we realized that Tetra, our heroine, revealed too much information that would be uncovered in later books. We decided to make Sterling the main storyteller since he’s what most would refer to as “The Dummy,” the one who questions everything and knows little of what’s about to happen.


I’m sort of at a loss when it comes to #ownvoices. I deeply respect the reasoning for it and it makes sense that if you aren’t qualified to be writing from a POV other than your own, then you shouldn’t be. But all that leaves me with are characters of my own background, and I feel limited in that because I’m Afro-Latinx. I’m not the average black narrative in the country I live in and my whole life I’ve been immersed in African American culture, especially Hip-Hop culture. So for the most part, I feel like I’ve been around enough African Americans to emulate them, so it feels strange for me to feel like I can’t write from that POV.

Our next heroine is Haitian American, we are not. Our next hero is half Japanese and half Welsh on his mom’s side. Again, we are not. What I can say is that we never walk into a project without the right team of helpers. If we don’t have anyone close to us to consult about cultures we don’t readily identify with, then it won’t happen. We care too much about good representation to write whatever we darn well choose.

You said online somewhere that you were “self-published and proud.” How do you respond to the prevailing stigma and exclusion of indie authors?

Well, it’s tough. I know that there is some stigma for being an indie author. There are actually a lot of things we’ve learned since publishing last year that we had to fall face first to learn–like that your book’s cover has to convey genre. That took us ages to figure out. After being mentored, we learned that our first cover read as middle grade, since it was illustrated and that’s more of a common practice for MG titles. Growing pains, lol.


We’ve always been super confused by the exclusion since before we realized it, we’d had several Indie books on our shelves that we loved and enjoyed and didn’t know there was a difference at the time (the authors clearly put a lot of time into their craft).


We didn’t care who’d published a story, just that it was a great story and that it was available to us. The only way we attempt to combat stigma is to write the stories we wished we had when we were much younger.


Does it feel like a “new day” in publishing from where you’re standing?


I wouldn’t say it feels like a “new day,” but I do think my sister and I focus more on pushing digital titles since that’s where we see the most success. It is a bit of a challenge since as Indie authors, it’s a ton of work to get into libraries. But it is our dream to be in libraries someday, we’re working on that now and hope to accomplish that goal by the end of the year.


I think the most beneficial part of being indie is that our readers have known where to find us. And by “readers” we mean girls that are missing from books. Darker-skinned, kinky-haired black girls who almost always find themselves missing in mainstream books because in our media, black is synonymous with the bi-racial aesthetic, which is also important. But there are young ladies who can not pass, or feel as though being “only” black isn’t good enough, and those are who we write our stories for. When something comes to us we don’t think, “Oh, I hope this is mainstream enough.” The only thought that passes through our heads is that there’s a young girl who’s got this big hair, or non-European features, or even this name that is hard to pronounce (like ours are). When she comes across a description of our female characters, she can’t help but squee a little when she realizes our main character talks like her, even if it’s that vernacular they teach you to avoid. Or how she can navigate more than one world, hers and the one she doesn’t always feel like she belongs in.

That’s the only thing we’re interested in when it comes to publishing. We just want the people our books are meant for to finally have what they’ve been searching for. So perhaps it is a new day. A new day where we aren’t solely depending on publishing houses to tell us when our stories are finally good enough to reach larger audiences.

Guinevere and Libertad go by many superhero aliases. Whether you know them by G.L. Tomas, the Twinjas, or the Rebellious Valkyries, their mission is always the same: spreading awareness of diversity in books. Oh, and trying to figure out the use for pocketless pants! They host other allies and champions of diversity in their secret lair in Connecticut.


Blog: http://twinjabookreviews.blogspot.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dos_Twinjas

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dos_twinjas/

what a day!

It’s so nice waking up to good news and today it just kept coming…

Reading While White is focusing on #OwnVoices for the month of September and I have the incredible good fortune of being the first featured author! Sam Bloom tagged me on Facebook and I had to rub the sleep out of my eyes when I saw “sublimely written” in his post. Allie Jane Bruce wrote this fantastic review of A Hand to Hold: “At once developmentally appropriate and exquisitely written, with a story that anyone experiencing separation will appreciate (especially those on the lookout for books about loving and caring fathers), A Hand To Hold is a much-needed book.”
Then I heard from the good folks at Tilbury House letting me know that Melena’s Jubliee was featured in the Children’s Book Council’s “ Hot Off the Press ” column for September: “This unique online bibliography features anticipated bestsellers, either recently released or forthcoming, published by CBC members.”
Another email from Tilbury followed a moment later sharing Publishers Weekly’s review of Melena.
In May Shelley Diaz at School Library Journal asked me to submit copies of The Door at the Crossroads for review and it was featured in this month’s YA Xpress column! There’s a mix-up in the plot summary but I’m still grateful that my self-published book was not just included but integrated into the column with traditionally published books.
Rich in Color posted news of their giveaway today! Enter to win one of 3 copies of The Door at the Crossroads and then share your thoughts about #Zettasbooks so we can discuss them together at the end of the month!

All in all, this has been an excellent start to the new month! And Mercury’s retrograde! I’ll be heading to Minnesota soon; you can find my public events listed at the website of one of my excellent hosts, Sarah Park Dahlen. She even made up a reading list to introduce folks to Zetta’s “greatest hits”…feeling very blessed.

“Good enough!”

That’s what my grandpa used to say after he fixed something with duct tape, or wood glue, or a bent, rusted nail from the jar he kept under the sink. As a child, I was ashamed of the second-hand clothes, and used cars, and battered furniture that defined us as poor, but as an adult I’m grateful for all the lessons I learned on how to “get by” and “make do.” Some folks think I’m a perfectionist but as someone who lives with anxiety, perfectionism is a luxury I can’t afford. So nothing I do is perfect—I reach a point where I’m satisfied and then I let go. It’s not always easy, but I can’t move on to the next project if I’m obsessing over x & y. I accept that my novels are flawed, and I don’t spend hours poring over each line of a 300-word picture book. I work hard, I try to be honest in my expression, and then I put it out into the world. Those t-shirts that say “flawless?” I’d rather wear one that reads: “deeply flawed.” Because I am. That said, what I have to say still matters. Right now I’ve got a hot water bottle on my lower back and I can feel my sciatica acting up again. By the time I turned off the computer last night, my eyes were streaming and I had a headache from trying (and largely failing) to make clean cuts as I edited the remaining 12 minutes of footage I filmed last week. I now know that I need to STOP recording once I hit the 3-minute mark. It’s really hard to create a coherent message when you’re cutting and pasting film clips. It’s not at ALL like cutting and pasting text, which I do all the time when I’m writing. This little filmmaking experiment has been humbling and I hope I can apply the lessons I’ve learned to the next film session—which should be sometime in September when my two new books come out. For now, the 4 short films can be found on my YouTube channel and my Videos page.

Now, back to the novel…

Black Magic = Black Power for Kids

Angela Davis once said her parents “prepared her for a world that didn’t yet exist.” Can speculative fiction do the same for Black youth today?

Decolonizing the Imagination of Black Children

What would happen if we recreated the Clarks’ famous doll test but used books instead?

Reclaiming Black Magic

Will there ever be enough stories to make up for the lack of inclusive children’s literature?

take 2

I wasn’t quite ready for my closeup, but I managed to post this short film to YouTube yesterday. On Tuesday night I set the tripod up in my favorite corner of the apartment—the walls are lavender, my books are neatly stacked on the bookcase shelves, and my sparkly purple frame holds a picture of my “nuclear family” from back in the day. I turned off the ceiling fan and filmed for just under three minutes. The next day I checked the light and decided to film again around noon; I waited until my hair was dry, then put on some lip gloss, powder, and mascara, and grabbed a dress I love but have never worn in public. I added my Egyptian-esque necklace and flipped the camera screen so I could see what I was filming. It felt like I looked and sounded mostly like my usual self, which mattered to me. I had written down some talking points and filmed for what seemed like five minutes but turned out to be twelve…forgot to mention reparations so sat back down, turned the camera on, and did another 2-minute segment. Then I watched an iMovie tutorial on YouTube and added titles and captions to that short clip. Folks on Facebook had a lot of great advice; despite fussing with the frame and flowers, the composition still wasn’t quite right…the wall looks grey instead of violet, and folks wanted to see more than just my head and shoulders. I’m taking an editing class at Apple today and then will look at the rest of my footage and decide whether to shoot it over again or move forward. I didn’t use a microphone but might need to invest in one if I’m going to film outside. I can’t figure out how to post the video to Twitter but friends are helping with that. I might break the footage up into 3 or 4 short segments and make them part of a series…too many possibilities can make me anxious, but this time I feel like I have lots of room to grow. I have a LOT to learn but it’s empowering just to say, “Today I’m going to try this,” and then make it a reality. Not aiming for perfection, just letting myself evolve…