This week, six esteemed Black authors celebrate their YA collaboration; Kate Messner launches a timely release; and Zoe Hana Mikuta gears up for her debut.
Black Stars Shine
Dani Kwateng (bottom c.), executive editor at Teen Vogue, joined the six bestselling and award-winning authors of the new collaborative novel Blackout (Quill Tree) for a virtual launch event on June 22. The YA novel features six interconnected stories of Black love during a blackout in New York City. Bookstore partners for the event included 44th and Third Booksellers in Atlanta; Barnes & Noble; Café con Libros in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Dock Bookshop in Dallas and Fort Worth, Tex.; Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C.; and Source Booksellers in Detroit. Pictured (top, from l.): Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, and Angie Thomas; and (bottom, from l.) Ashley Woodfolk, Kwateng, and Nicola Yoon.
Mess with the Best
Kate Messner (pictured) visited The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid, N.Y., on June 29 for the store’s first in-person event since the pandemic began. The indie bookstore celebrated the release of her picture book biography Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor, illustrated by Alexandra Bye (Simon & Schuster) with a sidewalk signing. “It was the next step for us in getting back to pre-pandemic ‘normalcy’ and it felt great!,” said store owner Sarah Galvin. “The fact that we were launching Kate’s book about Dr. Fauci was especially fitting.”
Breaking Free
On July 1, The Ripped Bodice, the West Coast’s only exclusively romance bookstore, located in Culver City, Calif., hosted an event celebrating the launch of Zoe Hana Mikuta’s debut Gearbreakers (Feiwel and Friends), which follows two Korean girls on opposing sides in a land of deity-mechas. Mikuta was joined by fellow Gen Z friends and authors, Tashie Bhuiyan (Counting Down with You, Inkyard), Chloe Gong (These Violent Delights, S&S/McElderry), Christina Li (Clues to the Universe, Quill Tree), and Racquel Marie (Ophelia After All, Feiwel and Friends).
