Good trouble coming April 7th to a bookshelf near you!

Critical Race Theory in LIS: Challenging White Supremacy in Libraries

A repost of a piece I wrote for the Out of the Box blog at Horn Book Magazine. This was years ago and long before the organization came out with its dismal AI statement. The post wasn’t an endorsement of the organization then, nor is it now, but the practice of sitting down and writing for a month (an especially hectic month) is still one that’s valuable for many writers and worth doing with or without the org’s logo attached.

That time I got to speak on a panel about reviewing practices and reviewer positionality as a Kirkus reviewer at BookExpo.

• “Everything is iterative at best; nothing is ever finished. We don’t want to let perfection become the enemy of “good and delivered.”
  • I’m a neurodivergent virgo. Perfectionism gets in my way…a lot.
• “If you don’t block off the time on your calendar, someone else will do it for you.”
  • Seizing the small control of folks not being able to just drop onto my calendar without warning plus being able to plan longer stretches of uninterrupted actually-get-shit-done time has done wonders.
• “There should always be people you’re treating with benign neglect.”
  • Can’t be everything to everyone all the time, especially if you’re to have any chance of ever prioritizing yourself. There’s no harm in taking time to refill your cup instead of filling someone else’s.
• “The world is made of things to avoid.”
  • Procrastination is sometimes the only reasonable response.

An addendum to my 2018 article to go further into the ways diversity language has been misused and misconceptualized.

The Research on Diversity in Youth Literature journal’s special issue on book challenges is now available!

Co-edited by Dr. Nicole Cooke and myself, this issue showcases some wonderful authors and activists with amazing cover art by Alejandra Diaz and a powerful op-ed from librarian Amanda Jones.

Rest assured that the blog bit of this site will feature very sporadic bursts of posts, and in that spirit, the next few will feature some “best-of” content from other spaces to make it easier to find. So stay nonchalantly tuned and check out some of the other pages here in the meantime (they’re where all the cool bits are!).

Oh and lastly—enjoy this quick fun fact. I have an illustrated doppelgänger:

Cheers!