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ver there from now on so i hope you ll take a look you can also find my essays videos and other important links over there i will check with my web designer to see if current subscribers need to sign up again at the new site i don t think so just had the most amazing afternoon at the brooklyn museum children s book fair sold almost all my books and had people coming back for titles that had sold out some people even asked to see an angel for mariqua which i was editing whenever i had a spare moment the demand is real i know it i say it all the time but there s nothing like seeing parents and kids excited about the books i create i ll have 2 more titles ready for december so stay tuned you can read my blog like my author zetta elliott page on facebook and or follow me on twitter zettaelliott the new website gives you the option of signing up for my newsletter too see you over there posted in uncategorized 2 comments quality quantity context november 7 2014 by elliottzetta i ll be speaking on an afrofuturism panel at brooklyn college next week and i hope i ll have the chance to talk about after earth most critics panned the film but for black youth boys in particular that film is groundbreaking something white reviewers just don t get sometimes i think it s not worthwhile to send my books out for review because many reviewers fail to situate the book within black storytelling traditions and within the context of the publishing industry what s already available or not so i m especially grateful to charlotte over at charlotte s library for her thoughtful review of the phoenix on barkley street and her provocative appropriate introduction quick think of a fantasy book written for early elementary aged kids of 8 or so where the fantasy stars a group of minority kids and takes place in an urban neighborhood where gangs and abandoned properties are big problems just like they are in many place s in real life and where the fantasy part itself is something truly beautiful and magical and hopeful i can think of one because i just read it the phoenix on barkley street by zetta elliott self published august 2014 ages 7 9 and tomorrow i will take it to a little free library that is in just such a neighborhood and hope that it falls into the hands of young readers who haven t yet been told that magic can happen to kids just like them so glad the book will find its way into kids hands charlotte concludes her review with a working list of first chapter books young elementary school books that are fantasies with kids of color and only 3 titles made the list including another one of mine the magic mirror does that mean a reviewer has to declare my book a masterpiece no but i think it s important to see this book not just as a story but an intervention so it s a good story and the writing is just right for a third or fourth grade reader getting their reading legs under them as it were and yay for diversity and urban fantasy targeted at this age group and yay for kids of color in fantasy books for elementary school readers i think it s awfully important to have lots of these so that ever y kid can be given a place at the table of the imagination and there really aren t many at all once you know that you can be in a fantasy story you can allow yourself to dream whatever you want i m making progress on the return and am thoroughly enjoying reviewing the chapters i wrote while i was in dakar last july i think book 3 in the freaks geeks trilogy will be shorter than book 2 but fast paced today i m hoping to write the chapter that features a djeli historian storyteller who looks a lot like lupita nyong o posted in uncategorized 1 comment a political november 5 2014 by elliottzetta children s literature is not neutral it can be educational and entertaining but books for kids also tell us something about our society and ourselves as i wrote in my last huffpo essay there s clearly a direct link between the misrepresentation of black youth as inherently criminal and the justification given by those who brazenly take their lives the publishing industry can t solve this problem but the relative lack of children s books by and about people of color nonetheless functions as a kind of symbolic annihilation despite the fact that the majority of school age children in the us are now kids of color the us publishing industry continues to produce books that overwhelmingly feature white children only the message is clear the lives of kids of color don t matter i m not a citizen so i can t vote and that stings a bit when i look at yesterday s election results but even if i can t vote i can still remain politically engaged as a writer and educator and self publisher the last bunny in brooklyn my allegory about race and social dislocation is available online now you should be able to order it from bookstores within a week and i m excited to be working with this talented illustrator once more babs is making amazing progress on fox crow a christmas tale and i hope to publish that illustrated book along with my middle grade novel an angel for mariqua next month mariqua s mom is incarcerated black women s rising rates of incarceration mattered to me back in 2000 when i wrote this novel and it still matters today be sure to check out the crunk feminist collective s new series voices from inside which lets women in prison tell their story their way posted in uncategorized 4 comments cell november 3 2014 by elliottzetta i used to tell people that i lived under a rock i m an hsp and one way i manage my various sensitivities is by withdrawing from the world my home is my sanctuary and i try to keep it clutter free by conducting regular purges so that i only keep the things i truly need and use last year i briefly considered downsizing and moving into a studio apartment there s something appealing about letting go of one s possessions as much as i love the antiques i inherited from my grandparents holding onto them limits my ability to move when i visited the cloisters last weekend i thought about the monastic life and how lovely it would be to live in silence in a small bare cell i took the garden tour but would have enjoyed it much more without the many tourists that fill the cloisters on the weekend on saturday i took the train to philly and made sure i got a seat in the quiet car right now my building is blissfully silent no barking dogs in neighboring apartments no hammering by construction workers up on the roof i need to go for a run but i hate to lose this moment i value solitude silence and simplicity but even i know that too much of those things can destroy a human being in the 1800s however prison reformers thought criminals could be reformed if given time alone to reflect on their actions eastern sate penitentiary was designed at great expense to house prisoners in solitary confinement with walls so thick that communication was impossible guards wore socks over their shoes to muffle the sound of their footsteps and prisoners were led to their cells wearing hoods so that they had no sense of the prison s layout they could go outside for one hour a day but only by stepping into an adjacent cell that was exposed to the sky no grass no human contact no sound a tiny cell with a bed and a toilet and a table where prisoners practiced a trade the writer in me finds this both appealing and appalling i could probably live like that for 2 days but after that i d start to lose it solitude diminishes in value without the contrast of human interaction to be endlessly alone is torture which is why we need to end solitary confinement in prisons if our goal really is rehabilitation how can anyone heal without community beauty nature touch cherish your freedom because 2 million people in this country have none posted in uncategorized leave a comment shut in shut out october 25 2014 by elliottzetta i always take a selfie on my birthday but this year i ve been taking pictures all month long every time i m out with friends i ask someone to snap a photo with their phone so that there s proof of our outing i ve just started writing again 850 words yesterday 300 the day before i m hoping to get back up to a thousand words a day which should allow me to finish the return by xmas i have my first bpl sponsored school visit in a few days and since i m no longer teaching i have plenty of days when i don t have to leave the house which is good when i m writing but not so good when i m not yesterday i went up to the society of illustrators to see the original art show and the leo diane dillon retrospective the original art exhibit took up two floors and the artwork was just stunning i was counting of course how many of these illustrators are people of color how many are women of color how many artists had multiple submissions i barely noticed who won the gold and silver medals perhaps because i was thinking about this article if you re lucky enough to earn a living from your art you re probably white which isn t surprising but is nonetheless frustrating and i found myself wondering as i wandered through the exhibit who s never had a chance to shine it s an honor to be included in the show but if you aren t being asked to illustrate picture books then there s no chance your art will be deemed good enough the outing soured further when i went up to the third floor and discovered that the dillon exhibit was in the restaurant so it was hard to get close to the art since there were diners and waiters and tables and steaming pans of food in the way i guess i could have asked to speak to the curator but instead i left thinking to myself of course of course the art i really want to see is treated that way i can remember visiting black owned a b books when i first came to nyc and marveling at all the book covers that featured art by the dillons i d never seen black folks depicted so beautifully and magically i may print out a bunch of dillon illustrations from the web and pin them to my bulletin board to inspire me as i write their art is the stuff of dreams my birthday is tomorrow but this email i received on thursday is the best possible gift ms elliott my daughter recently received the magic mirror for a gift a few weeks ago and it s amazing all i kept saying was i have to find this author and say thank you i have to this has become my daughter s favorite book and she takes it everywhere with us thank you for writing and publishing a book like that and all the others that you have it means a lot to us i have to believe that even when we re marginalized our work will find a way to those who need it most i ve decided to draft an open letter to the we need diverse books committee they re doing important work but lasting change won t happen unless they address the source of the problem i m glad that brown girl collective posted this quote from audre lorde on facebook yesterday when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid so it is better to speak audre lorde 1934 1992 poet author and activist posted in uncategorized 7 comments be radical october 21 2014 by elliottzetta while i was in sacramento i met kate schatz chair of the school of literary arts at oakland school for the arts and author of rad american women a z laura atkins introduced us of course and persuaded kate to take a look at my books of course today i woke up and found this awesome photo on twitter kate wrote this is my student amaya who looooooooooved the deep i knew she d dig it with her awesome sense of style amaya could be nyla and i hope the novel served as a mirror for her yesterday i said i was going to work on judah s tale next but now i feel like nyla s got something more pressing to say this morning i also found out that i will not be getting fully reimbursed for my senegal trip back in july and you know what as annoying as that is it s ok because the research i conducted on that trip will enable me to write the final book in the freaks geeks trilogy and if amaya s the only black girl who reads the return that will be ok too as nyla learns in book 3 sometimes being radical means being on your own posted in uncategorized 2 comments medieval mix october 20 2014 by elliottzetta cover art by the dillons for in praise of our mothers fathers just us books 1997 i ve started planning my annual low key birthday celebration this brooklyn photography exhibit is on the list along with the dillons retrospective at the society of illustrators then on the actual day i think i ll visit the cloisters and maybe have ethiopian food with friends the best gift would be to start writing again tired of editing and the endless administrative tasks that go into publishing a book i m prepping an angel for mariqua and fox crow a christmas tale for a thanksgiving release if i can then start working on judah s tale i ll publish that ya novel and billie s blues a picture book in early 2015 happy birthday get busy posted in uncategorized 1 comment seed source october 17 2014 by elliottzetta my website s getting an overdue overhaul and it s been challenging to find a look that represents who i am as a writer there will be purple of course but i originally wanted a plantation ruins aesthetic that proved hard to achieve my designer asked for a quote for the site and i was initially stumped but finally went with a line uttered by genna in a wish after midnight i don t know which matters more where the seed comes from or where it takes root and grows i realized that i wanted my ancestor photos to appear on the site because they are my source folks from canada nevis and the us i just tidied up the ancestor wall in my apartment and framed a new photo that my uncle gave me a couple of years ago ellen gowland above married my great great grandfather james henry allen and one of her sisters married one of his brothers ellen s white family was so appalled at her marriage to a black man that they moved and changed their surname to golden i think unreal james wouldn t allow himself to be photographed because he didn t want his descendants to be ashamed what i wouldn t give to see his face that tells you just how racist canada was is it was so hard being black that he decided the family would gradually leave their blackness behind and pass for white some of james and ellen s kids could pass for white but some could not my great grandfather richard allen fell into the latter category i don t know if he d be proud of me i don t know if he hated blackness or just the way blacks were disadvantaged throughout canadian society i wish i had more photographs of my caribbean family my mother took me and my sister to a professional portrait studio when i was about 6 months old apparently i was sensitive to bright light even back then because the photographer s flash left me wide eyed for hours in other news here s the cover for my latest book posted in uncategorized leave a comment not nice october 14 2014 by e...
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