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Some Girls Are Donation Drive: The Response

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sga bookshelves

A quick post to share a few links to stories that wrap up and are the direct result of the amazing outpouring of donations to get Some Girls Are into the hands of teens in Charleston.

First, I wrote about the process and final send out results at Book Riot. This post hit reddit, and then later on, it hit the front page of reddit. That sort of readership — and the result was overwhelmingly positive — made me even prouder of what we were able to make happen. Along with getting books to teens, we raised the issue of censorship with a huge audience that may otherwise never understood how it works. Here’s the piece.

Meanwhile, down in Charleston, the local news channels have been running with the story. ABC 4 interviewed Andria about the donation drive, and that helped get the word out to the community to come out and pick up books. According to Andria, the library nearest to West Ashley is already asking for more copies since they’ve been being picked up quickly.

CBS 5 in Charleston also interviewed Andria, and this particular video is more than worth the watch. One of the teens who read the book talks about it and how much it mattered to her. A mother, too, is interviewed about the book and both highlight why I wanted to help with this initiative. Watch it here and prepare to get misty-eyed like me.

This afternoon, a reporter from the Charleston Post and Courier gave me a call, and we talked about book challenges, my experiences working with teens, and I rambled at great length about intellectual freedom and teenagers. Here’s the piece.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible. The impact is not small, and I couldn’t be prouder than seeing and hearing about the teens who are picking up the book and opening up conversations, among themselves and with adults in their lives.

Change Can Happen

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30 boxes

 

This morning, I finished sending off 30 boxes of Some Girls Are down to Andria Amaral at Charleston County Public Library. She’ll be working to get all of the books out to teens at West Ashley High School who would like a copy, for free, since they had the option of reading this book over the summer removed from them. If you don’t know the backstory to this situation, NCAC has a great wrap-up, including a look at how the administration failed to follow their own policies in this situation. That one parent can do this is unacceptable. . . but look what we, the book community, did in response:

 

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In addition to the over 830 copies being sent down, more copies are trickling into my house still, which will be packed and sent next week. Further, when asked if people could help with the cost of shipping the books, you all rose to the challenge, too, sending over $600 to help cover shipping.

The total cost of shipping, in the interest of being transparent, was $450. For 30 boxes ranging in weight from 20 to 45 pounds, that feels like a steal, especially knowing the impact this will have on the lives of those teens. Of course, the book will touch them, but what really matters here, and what this will really and truly show to those teens, is how much they matter. How much people care about them. How they have advocates in their own community who want to allow them the opportunity to find themselves.

That is a feeling that cannot be articulated or measured.

We’ve done right by these teens, and I cannot wait to share what happens when Andria receives the books and puts them into the hands of teens. The thought really does bring tears to my eyes.

If you’re wondering what came of the additional $150 donated for shipping, it’s this:

100 copies sga

 

I sent 100 copies directly to Andria.

There will be a longer, more in-depth piece coming when the books are distributed, but I wanted to send a tremendous and heart-felt thank you to everyone. This project was incredible and moving, and it really reiterated to me how wonderful the book community is and how much you care about the well-being of teenagers.

Teens don’t get that every day. Teens who have situations like this happen certainly don’t feel respected or cared about. They learn early on that the things that impact them are too much to be seen or talked about.

But we’re going to show them the opposite.

Thank you. Truly. I am honored and moved to be part of such a thoughtful, generous community.

This is what change and advocacy and passion look like.

Giveaway: From Where I Watch You by Shannon Grogan

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Back in 2010 — even typing that makes me realize how that was a long time ago! — I joined a critique group. I had plans to work on a novel, and even though none of those manuscripts will ever see the light of day, being a part of this group taught me a lot about critiquing, about writing, and about my own writing process (and that I was totally not ready to write a novel then).

One of the girls in that group I bonded with pretty quickly was Shannon Grogan. And one of the first things I read was her manuscript for what would eventually become From Where I Watch You. She worked on this novel for years and years, and it was so neat to see it go from idea to a work in progress to a manuscript to now, a fully published novel. It was thrilling to see her dream come to fruition, and it was thrilled to be a part of this process in terms of offering feedback and insight along the way.

It was an honor to help her rework that first chapter to perfection as she queried agents and then to be able to see her be offered representation from multiple agents. When her book was sold to Soho, I had a feeling it would be in really great hands. Soho has been doing really great stuff with their teen lines.

Now that From Where I Watch You is out and on shelves, I wanted to talk a little bit about it here on STACKED. I obviously can’t review it, but it’s the kind of book I think so many teen readers will love. It’s an edgier mystery about a girl who has a dream of getting out and away from the ghosts that haunt her, from the death of her sister to her mother who has turned into a holy roller to the mysterious notes that keep popping up. Her way out is through a baking competition. This could help her land her dream and get her the money she needs to pursue her future on her own terms.

In a lot of ways, Shannon’s book reminds me of Trish Doller’s books, particularly in her writing and style. The voices here are very teen and teen readers will see themselves in the story, even if they haven’t even been in this situation.

Here’s the full description of From Where I Watch You:

Sixteen-year-old Kara McKinley is about to realize her dream of becoming a professional baker. Beautifully designed and piped, her cookies are masterpieces, but also her ticket out of rainy Seattle—if she wins the upcoming national baking competition and its scholarship prize to culinary school in California. Kara can no longer stand the home where her family lived, laughed, and ultimately imploded after her mean-spirited big sister Kellen died in a drowning accident. Kara’s dad has since fled, and her mom has turned from a high-powered attorney into a nutty holy-rolling Christian fundamentalist peddling “Soul Soup” in the family café. All Kara has left are memories of better times.

But the past holds many secrets, and they come to light as Kara faces a secret terror. Someone is leaving her handwritten notes. Someone who knows exactly where she is and what’s she’s doing. As they lead her to piece together the events that preceded Kellen’s terrible, life-changing betrayal years before, she starts to catch glimpses of her dead sister: an unwelcome ghost in filthy Ugg boots. If Kara doesn’t figure out who her stalker is, and soon, she could lose everything. Her chance of escape. The boy she’s beginning to love and trust. Even her life.


To celebrate the publication of Shannon’s book, as well as to get the word out about the book a little further, I wanted to give away two copies of the book to STACKED readers. This one is for US residents, and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the month.



Welcome To The New STACKED!

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STACKED_–_books

 

 

If you’re reading us from a feed reader, hop on over to our main site and take a look at the brand new design and set-up we’re got at STACKED.

After six and a half years, we decided it was time to get a new look. Kim and I had been talking about doing this for years, but we never took the leap. We recently discovered a huge problem with being hosted on Blogger — one we’re not at liberty to talk about but was a security and safety issue — and that made us choose now to change. We’ve gone to being self-hosted at WordPress and underwent a custom redesign with Designer Blogs. We could not be happier with the look or with the entire process of working with Erika and the team at Designer Blogs. STACKED is now cleaner, easier to read, and modern without being too cute or too white and hard on the eyes. We’re also huge fans of the new logo.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working to update our drop-down menus to ensure that our stuff is much easier to find and navigate than it was before. There will be hiccups throughout. We know some images and links and spacing got muddied a bit while the change happened, but we’ll be working to fix it over the next month or so.

Our goal is to make navigating STACKED much simpler and cleaner. We want to make it so people who want a book list can find a book list without a problem. We are making it easy to find posts on specific topics, and we’re working to streamline our labeling system and to pull out some backlist gems we know are ripe for revisiting. Since we’re now on WordPress, we know images are a little trickier to work with, so we’ll be coming up with ways to improve the visual elements we so frequently write about, too.

Thanks for being STACKED readers, and we hope you enjoy the new look as much as we do.

Announcing: Part One of FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD Contributions

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via the Creative Commons

Remember the time I sold an anthology of feminist essays to Algonquin Young Readers? It’s been a few months since I’ve talked about it here on STACKED, and that’s for good reason: I’ve been working on collecting the most dynamic, exciting, wide-ranging voices to contribute.

One of the goals of this collection is to have a solid group of essays, as well as art and comics. One of the other goals was to also reach out to “big name” and celebrities to get their voices into the collection, too. I won’t lie and say that part was easy, but I will say that has been one of the most enjoyable, eye-opening, and educational elements of putting together this collection. I have learned about negotiating on rights, among other things. Because some of these negotiations aren’t complete yet, I don’t feel comfortable sharing, but needless to say, I’m very excited by the “big” names who will be included in the collection.

But I’m not going to be a complete meanie in this post. I DO have a roster of contributors who have signed, sealed, and delivered contracts to me for inclusion in Feminism For The Real World. Curious who they might be?

I’m excited to share, in alphabetical order, the authors and artists who will be included in the anthology. Their pieces range in topic, in voice, in structure, and in approach, and the ones I have seen so far have blown me away. I cannot wait to see the whole of this come together, and more, I cannot wait for this collection to get into the hands of teenagers — especially teenage girls — in spring 2017.

I’ve linked to the websites or work of the contributors, so you can check out what they’ve been working on and what it was about their work, their voices, and their perspectives that made me want to include them:



Illustrators and Artists


It’s an honor to work with this roster of writers and artists. I’ve admired so much of their work and their insights, that being told “yes! I’m interested!” to contributing to my collection was nothing short of flattering.

 

This is my dream project, and I’ve learned so much so far, both from the contributors and my editors. I cannot wait to talk more about this as the project proceeds, but one thing that stands out to me is something I talked a bit about earlier this summer: the course I took in college as my capstone, where the final project was developing an anthology, has played a tremendous role in my thinking about this particular collection. But more — and maybe more importantly — it made me rethink some of the things I learned or analyzed in that particular class. Like in librarianship, you learn about ideals and perfect case scenarios in the classroom. You ask a lot of “why did they fail to do this or this or this?” in regards to imperfection in creation.
But the truth is, when you’re in the thick of things, when you’re actually on the ground making and doing, there are so many confounding factors that muddy the process. Nothing will ever be perfect; it can’t be. Instead, you make it the best thing you can make it, and you take pride in that. The process of asking myself questions, of asking questions of those who know better or who have more experience, has been enlightening and humbling.
I’m very proud of this so far, and I’m only going to be more thrilled as further pieces click into place. I cannot wait to see it all come together.