neil-gaiman:weneeddiversebooks:weneeddiversebooks:On Wednesday, We Need Diverse Books™ advisory boar
neil-gaiman:weneeddiversebooks:weneeddiversebooks:On Wednesday, We Need Diverse Books™ advisory board member Jacqueline Woodson—author of the marvelous Brown Girl Dreaming—was one of several authors honored with a National Book Award. As has been reported on various websites, host Daniel Handler made a number of racist remarks during that night, including regarding Jacqueline Woodson. Handler has since apologized and said:My remarks on Wednesday night at #NBAwards were monstrously inappropriate and yes, racist. It would be heartbreaking for the #NBAwards conversation to focus on my behavior instead of great books. So can we do this? Let’s donate to #WeNeedDiverseBooks to #CelebrateJackie. I’m in for $10,000, and matching your money for 24 hours up to $100,000. Brown Girl Dreaming is an amazing novel and we need more voices like Jacqueline Woodson.Many people on Twitter have urged Handler to donate to our fundraiser, and we’re glad to see this has had an effect. For twenty-four hours starting at 8AM EST on Friday, November 21, Handler is doubling donations—up to $100,000—made to the We Need Diverse Books™ campaign. If anyone has been intending to donate, we’d like to suggest they do it within this time frame to let their donation count double.Among many other goals (detailed on the fundraiser page), we intend to use these donations to fund publishing internships for people from diverse backgrounds in an effort to diversify the publishing industry behind the scenes. We believe that’s an important step toward making the industry more welcoming to people of all backgrounds and prevent mistakes like Wednesday’s.To center this conversation back on National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson and her astonishing accomplishment, we have added several special today-only #CelebrateJackie perks to our fundraiser. Donors can choose to receive signed books, including her most recent release Brown Girl Dreaming.Please spread the word and #CelebrateJackie!UPDATE: We’ve exceeded $50k in donations today! We have under twelve hours left to raise further money toward the $100k goal, so please keep spreading this post. We especially suggest writers to keep checking our IndieGoGo page, as we’re working on offering several new editor and agent critiques as perks.Thanks to today’s generous donations, we’ve surpassed $150,000 and thus both our our campaign’s stretch goals. This brings us to our third stretch goal: sustainability.The problem with diversity in children’s literature won’t be solved over night or even in a year. Battling entrenched barriers for diverse books takes sustained effort. Your donations from here on out, every single dollar, helps WNDB maintain our long-term viability and to continue to change the face of children’s literature for years to come. Thank you so much for your support in the aftermath of this event.Reblogging to boost the signal and because, Hell, over $50,000 in the first 12 hours… -- source link