LitMinds Blog and Interviews

Aaron Schlieve runs Florey’s Book Co in Pacifica, California, a small independent bookstore just blocks away from the Pacific Ocean.  Customers have called Florey’s “the last great independent bookstore in the area;” the store’s cozy size and personal connections with customers make it a haven for booklovers in its town.  

Here at LitMinds, we discovered Florey’s during a walk through Pacifica several months ago, and since then we’ve been enjoying getting to know more about Aaron and the store.  Recently, we talked to Aaron about his experiences running this small, family-owned shop, how his love of science affects his reading habits, and what working in a small surfing town means for business.  
 

Florey’s is a charming store located in the small coastal town of Pacifica, California, less than an hour south of San Francisco.  Tell us a little bit about how you became an independent bookseller, and how you ended up in Pacifica.  

Florey's Books was started by my grandmother Mary Florey over 30 years ago.  She is still involved in the operation of the store.  I spent much of my youth hanging around the store, and reading everything.   I have been working at the store for over 12 years now, and hope to continue it as long as I can, despite the stiff competition.


As an independent bookseller, what do you think are the main differences between what you do and what someone who works at a large chain bookstore does?   What’s harder, and what’s easier – or what’s more enjoyable or less enjoyable?

Frankly, the hard part is trying to compete with the huge discounts they can offer, that we simply cannot.  
 

In your opinion, why is it important to support independent bookstores?  

I feel it is important to support independent businesses of all kinds, really. The increasing concentration of corporate wealth and control is not anything good for people who are not CEOs at the corporations!  So support your local indy bookshop, but also your local indy food market, clothing shops, etc.  


What’s it like to work in a small surfing town?  Is your experience at Florey’s different than it would be if you were working at a store in a larger city?

Hmm – well, I grew up on the coast here, but have never been surfing.  It is definitely nice to have our shop in a small coastal town.  The benefit of being in a larger city would be more walk-in traffic and tourists.  As it is in our store, probably 99% of our customers are return customers, from our town.   


What are some books that you’ve recommended to customers recently, and why?  What are some customer favorites?    

Well, Mary is a history and archeology buff, so she usually recommends those sorts of things.  She enjoyed 'Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World' by Jack Weatherford quite a bit, and has suggested it to several of our customers.  I tend to read non-fiction, and particularly like mechanical engineering and other applied sciences.  An amazing book I just read and cannot rate highly enough is 'Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape' by Brian Hayes.  It is exactly what it says, detailing all sorts of interesting information about everything from electrical generation and power transmission to agriculture and communications.  It is copiously illustrated with great color photos.  

Our most popular books over the last few years have been 'Pacifica' by Chris Hunter and Bill Drake, one of the Images of America series.  Also, 'America: the Book' by Jon Stewart and the Daily Show staff has been quite popular here.  Any books dealing with our local area seem to do quite well.


What are some of your favorite books or authors?  How have they influenced you?

Personally, I almost never read fiction anymore, but Philip K. Dick and Haruki Murakami are two of my favorite novelists.  I like the sometimes strange feelings or settings in both of their work, but also the down-to-earth characters and humanistic elements that are often present.  As for single favorite books, that is hard to say.  However, despite the fact that I am not as interested in space and astrophysics as other branches of science, 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan is one of the most important books I have ever read.  It is a reaffirmation for me personally of the everlasting quest for knowledge, and shunning of superstition.  It is the one book that I wish every person would read.

 

You can read the Florey's Book Co profile here and discuss this interview here.   

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Gary Frank is the man behind The Booksmith, one of San Francisco’s leading independent bookstores.  He opened the store in 1976 and built it into a mainstay of the city’s literary culture; over the years The Booksmith has hosted writers such as Ray Bradbury, Alan Ginsburg, Gary Larson, Kazuo Ishiguro and Matt Groening, and has been named San Francisco’s best store for new books by SF Weekly.  Recently, Gary decided to sell The Booksmith (to two of our favorite LitMinded people), and last week marked the first day of the store’s new ownership.

We caught up with Gary in the wake of the transition to ask him about what it was like creating such a neighborhood institution, what he’s up to next, and what, after more than 30 years of selling books, he recommends to readers. 

You opened the independent bookstore The Booksmith in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district over 30 years ago.  How did you get into the bookselling business?  Was it a longstanding dream, or an opportunity that came up suddenly?  Did it turn out as you imagined or hoped it would?

I began selling books in January of 1969 at a relatively small bookstore in Palm Springs, California called Bookland.  The store was primarily a paperback bookstore with a small selection of bestselling hardbacks.  The bookstore and its owner and staff kind of became my family.  I quickly learned to love the business, the product and the customers.  The store to this day has always been my model of what a well organized, well-stocked bookstore should be.  I continued to work in the book business in college at UC Berkeley and then at Macy’s, San Francisco, when they had a book department.  My manager at Macy’s, a Yugoslavian gentleman named Bruno Cipcich, took me under his wing and encouraged me to open my own store.  I explored various neighborhoods in San Francisco and determined that the Haight Ashbury district offered just what I was looking for—cheap rent; no new bookstore; a literate, hip community; a central location; and tremendous potential.  The Booksmith began in 1976 and continued to grow, but it was not until it moved to a much larger location that it really began to thrive and reach its potential.  Having been in business for almost 31 years, I would say my little adventure that started out when I was in my 20s turned out better than I could have ever imagined.
 

Earlier this month, you sold the store and turned over the reins to new owners.  How do you feel about leaving the business?  Do you have new projects in the works?

I feel great about the transition of ownership.  The new owners are motivated, enthused and bubbling with new ideas to revitalize the business.  My new project is to market an invention.  For years I have been frustrated by shelftalkers, those little staff recommendation blurbs that one sees hanging off shelves in bookstores. They eventually get tattered, torn and worn out.   I have created a device in which to insert those blurbs and protect them and make them more readable.  Best of all, the Plexiglas holder that holds the blurb swivels up and down to allow books behind the blurb to be removed and replaced easily.  The booksellers I have showed it to are eager to buy them and install them in their stores.  So I plan to begin marketing the device, Shelfwiz, to bookstores in the fall.


During the 30 years you ran The Booksmith, it became a San Francisco institution.  Tell us about a couple favorite memories or highlights of your time with the store.  

The most memorable times were some of the events we have had.  Some of the standouts are:  Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Avedon, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithful, Neil Young, Timothy Leary, Ray Manzarek, Dave Eggers, David Sedaris.


What are some of the unexpected pleasures of running a bookstore – and The Booksmith, in particular?

I think it is the people you get to know and the relationships you build with them.


How do you think the store’s location in the Haight affected the business – clientele, inventory, etc?  Did you choose that location purposely when you started the business?  

From the start it was our customers that determined the stock mix in the store.  It was not only what residents of the community wanted but also what tourists wanted.  The residents and its visitors have countercultural and musical leanings and our inventory reflects that.  


What would you like to see happen with The Booksmith in the next 5-10 years?  Do you have hopes for the future of the store?

I would like to see it continue to serve the wonderful people of the Haight and continue to grow and remain one of San Francisco’s leading independent bookstores.


With the rise of chain bookstores and large online retailers such as Amazon.com, the bookselling industry is changing.  What do you see as the future of the profession?  Is the direction you see it going the same one you would like it to take?

I have never seen chain bookstores as a threat.  If an independent bookstore has a solid community base and continues to try to serve that community as best it can, then it can fight off the chains.  Amazon.com is another issue.  Amazon has changed the way people buy books. Customers who would ordinarily not patronize a chain, don’t think twice about buying from Amazon.   Independent bookstores need to figure out a way to get this business back.


What are some of the books you frequently recommended to customers?  What are some of your favorites?  

My all time favorite book, THE BROTHERS K, By David Duncan is a wonderful novel about a family, including three boys, who grow up in the Vietnam era, shaped by a passion for baseball.  I enjoy recommending books like Richard Russo’s EMPIRE FALLS, Michael Chabon’s AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, John Kennedy Toole’s CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, PILLARS OF THE EARTH by Ken Follett, and anything by John Irving.  Most of all, I like feeling out a customer’s interests and figuring out what book they might love.

 

You can see Gary's LitMinds profile here. 

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Sheila Kohler is the author of six novels and several other works; her most recent book is the historical novel Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness.  Now a writer and teacher in New England, Kohler grew up in South Africa and lived in France for several years before coming to the United States.  Her first story, “The Mountain,” received an O’Henry prize, and her story “Africans” was published in the Best American Short Stories of 1999.   Since she came to the United States, her work has been acclaimed by publications across the country, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Elle magazine.

We interviewed Sheila after the recent release of Bluebird.  In this conversation, she tells us about the intricacies of writing historical fiction, what it’s like to write happiness, and her love of the Bronte sisters.  


Your latest book, Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness, is a historical novel about an 18th-century French aristocrat.  Tell us a little bit about how you chose this subject, and how it relates to the rest of your work.

I lived in France for many years and did a degree in psychology at the Institut Catholique.  I made a great friend there, Jeanette Perrette, to whom my book is dedicated. She was a great help to me with my studies, which were in French and often required oral exams. Years later she visited me in New York, where I was living, and brought a book with her.  “You ought to read this. It’s about a French aristocrat who left France during the revolution and became a dairy farmer in the Albany area,” she said. It was the memoir of the Marquise de la Tour du Pin.  I put the book away in my bookcase, thinking I was not interested in the life of some old French aristocrat.  But years later, having written eight books and used my own life extensively, I pulled the book out and began to peruse its wonderful pages. I was drawn in by the voice and the inspiring life of this French aristocrat who had used every occasion to learn something about life.


Your protagonist, Lucy Dillon, encounters several famous historical figures in the book, such as Marie Antoinette and Alexander Hamilton.  What are some of the special considerations for writing historical fiction?  How closely does your story approximate Lucy Dillon’s life, and how did you decide where to draw the line between history and fiction?

I tried not to falsify history and to stay true to the facts.  At the same time I allowed myself the liberty on the page of inventing thoughts and feelings, dialogue and all the sensations that are necessary to create a live character on the page. I kept thinking of the advice J.M. Coetzee gave me: “Don’t stay too close to the truth.” I was trying to find an emotional truth that the dry facts do not perhaps convey on their own.


You’ve said that while writing Bluebird, “It occurred to me how rare it is to encounter a female protagonist who is not only very capable and self-assured but actually happy.”  Why do you think there is a dearth of successful, happy female protagonists?  Was it important for you, as a woman writer, to attempt to fill that void?  

Life is difficult, of course, for us all; and fiction, or good fiction, often comes from an account of suffering. It is one of the things someone told me when I began to write. “The hurts are good,” she said to me. It is more difficult in a way to make happiness believable on the page.  Yet it exists. Women, particularly, of course, have suffered and have often been forced into passive roles. I wanted to use the life of this brave woman to show women everywhere what is, perhaps, possible – how even in the worst of times we can attempt at least to learn something about life and the human heart.


You were born in South Africa and lived in France for several years before settling in the United States.  How has this global perspective affected your writing?  Do your own experiences factor into any of your work, such as Bluebird, or your short story “Africans?”

Yes, of course. I think all writers use their lives more or less.  We are all searching for a sort of middle distance, a place that is sufficiently far from our own lives to be shared with others, something that will be true for us and also meaningful to other people. I have tried to use my life, the death of a sister who died in dramatic circumstances, which are referred to in the story “Africans,” to say something about everyone’s life.


What kind of literature do you like to read?  What writers have influenced you, either directly or indirectly?  

I have read widely, of course, for my own pleasure and to learn my craft. I began as a small child growing up in South Africa, where there was no television and where books were my only escape from a narrow and somewhat claustrophobic world. I read everything I could lay my hands on, including that old bodice ripper Forever Amber, as a teenager. I was reading to discover the world.  Now I am often reading to improve what I write, but I’m drawn of course to old favourites. At the moment I’ve been reading all the Brontes’ work for something that I’m writing. It was a joy to discover Anne Bronte whom I did not know well.  I love the Russians, of course, Chekhov for the short story and the great French writers as well. Madame Bovary—there’s an unhappy lady—is one of my great favourites.  

 
You can discuss this interview here. 

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Edwin Frank works at the New York Review of Books, where he is the Editorial Director of the NYRB Classics series, which reintroduces great books that have fallen out of print or out of sight in recent years.  Last month, the series celebrated the publication of its 200th work, Georges Simenon’s novel The Engagement.

We got to know Edwin through his publication of Sir Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 last October; LitMinds recently hosted an event with the author in Berkeley, California.  This week we talk with Edwin about his work at NYRB Classics, the international bent of the series, and why he likes reading dead people’s work.    


While many folks in the LitMinds community are familiar with The New York Review of Books, they might not know as much about the history of the literary magazine and the more recent creation of the NYRB publishing house.  Tell us a bit about NYRB’s legacy within the literary community.  
 
The New York Review of Books first appeared in 1963, when a strike had shut down the New York Times. The magazine was edited by Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein, as it continued to be until Epstein’s death last year. Robert Silvers is now the sole editor. The Review rapidly made a name for itself thanks to the quality of its regular contributors, (over the years they have included Edmund Wilson, W.H. Auden, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Joan Didion, J.M. Coetzee, John Banville, Michael Chabon, and Colm Toibin); for running pieces that were not just notices of new books, but extensive and thoughtful responses to them; and for its unabashedly liberal politics. In the aftermath of September 11, the Review has been a consistent and outspoken opponent of the Bush administration.
 
The NYRB Classics series, which I edit, started coming out at the end of the nineties. It was a project of Rea Hederman, the publisher of the Review and at that time also the publisher of Granta and Granta Books (an English house), rather than of the editors of the Review, from which the series has always been editorially independent. When we began it, I was mindful that all sorts of good books had gone out of print as big publishers backed away from any kind of work, literary or not, that wasn’t likely to sell in quantity. Selling books as a series is of course something people have been doing since the nineteenth century (at least).  We had the obvious thought that doing so would work to set our books apart and to suggest, or simply impose, an apparent unity in what we intended to be a wide ranging list. Our first season, for example, we published Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, and the wonderful Ivy Compton-Burnett.
 
Small publishers face many difficulties, of course, as, in a different way, do big publishers. This is, plainly enough, a time when print is losing its centrality within the culture at large. Other media can provide information and entertainment that people used to turn to print for, and often they do it very well. The prestige of literature and audience for it are sure to dwindle, though the remnant I expect will be a devout one. Certain kinds of literature that were once of great importance to many people (notably poetry--think of how popular Tennyson was) have already returned to what might be called a manuscript culture. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. Marginalization could be good for literature—the shelves of libraries are full of worthy novels, for example, that were to the well-bred readers of the twentieth century what the devotional manuals of the nineteenth century were to their readers--though of course it could also lead to trivialization and preciosity. In any case, smaller publishers, who know their small audiences, may be in a better position to deal with the changing situation than big ones.
 
 
Can you share a bit about the importance of reintroducing classics through new publications?  
 
I never really liked the title classics: the word has become debased, perfect for shoes and cookies and golden oldies. In so far as it does retain a meaning it suggests canonicity, and though I have nothing against canonicity, the category isn’t coextensive with that of books that are still worth reading. And from the start I wanted us to mix up old and new books, wanted to bring out connections between the past and the present. I suppose you might describe the books we do not so much as classics, with its ring of the classroom, as books that are—so we hope—still in the repertory—thinking of the book as a kind of score and of reading as kind of mental performance.

 
The reemergence of interest in Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (NYRB, Oct. 2006), due to Henry Kissinger’s recommendation to the Bush Administration to read this book as a resource for the Iraq war, serves as one striking example of how a classic book can have great relevance in current events.  As we discovered through the recent LitMinds event with Sir Alistair Horne in Berkeley, California, people were very interested in the parallels drawn between Horne’s historical analysis of the Algerian war and today’s war in Iraq.  How does the reintroduction of non-fiction books, like Horne’s A Savage War of Peace, compare and contrast to that of republished fictional works?  
 
It’s as important for us to mix up non-fiction and fiction in the series as it is to feature works from different times and places. The difficulty in turning up older works of non-fiction is that style and content tend to date at different rates. That’s less the case with works of fiction, which fizzle out quickly like a match. A lot of non-fiction readers expect a more or less transparent style, one that serves to convey the information clearly – but of course there are styles of transparency. What seems fresh and forthright today stales before too long, even if the facts or thinking haven’t budged. But then the presumed facts often do budge, and are subject to matters of style, too. Once Freud explained everything and now Darwin does.
 
Then again non-fiction means so many things (as the non-committal name of the category suggests). Memoirs are in effect fictions of self, and are established as a literary genre. They may be full of lies, but if the lies have legs, that’s good enough (if only to enrage people). Some histories live on as masterpieces of style and characterization—in effect of art. Think of Carlyle’s French Revolution, which is not the place to go for the history, but is a thrilling book. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy teaches the happy lesson that a triumphant style can bring even the deadest of facts and theories to life.
 
Horne’s book is a case of an outstanding work of research, synthesis, and exposition (especially when one considers what a complicated story he has to tell) that fell victim to the America’s vast carelessness about the rest of the world. Events have made both the importance and drama of the subject, along with Horne’s talents as a historian, newly evident. The same might be said of C.V. Wedgwood’s great history of The Thirty Years War, which we published several years back.
 
 
To date, NYRB has published more than 200 classics during your tenure as the editorial director.  Drawing from your experience, tell us about a couple of the books that have had an unexpected response or reception by readers.
 
What takes off is usually a surprise. Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, having been around in English for almost thirty years, is now being widely recognized as the masterpiece it is. When published I think it was received as one more piece of dissident literature, so politely reviewed, but not embraced--in a sense, not read. Now people see it as a defining work of Soviet literature, all the more so because it reveals the terrible inhumanity of the Soviet Union in light of its greatest triumph, the defeat of Hitler. I’ve also been delighted and not a little amazed to see English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s wonderful comedy about the Indian civil service take off, not to mention Carlo Emilio Gadda’s modernist mystery That Awful Mess of the Via Merulana, or our recent anthology of Paul Schmidt’s translations of the great Russian poets of the Revolution, The Stray Dog Cabaret. But we survive not through bestsellers but because, to a greater or a lesser degree, people inevitably continue to take an interest in the range of books in the series.
 
A book I wish people would pick up more of—hardly anyone ever does—is L.H. Myer’s The Root and the Flower. It is a wonderfully vivid novel set in Akbar’s India, a novel of ideas, a novel of growing up, a novel about the power of sex and about the perversions of power, a Buddhist novel, for that matter, praised by Ursula Le Guin, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Eliot Weinberger. I like it a lot, too.
 
 
NYRB is one of a select group of publishers that contributes to Reading the World, a collaboration of independent booksellers and publishers that are “interested in bringing international voices to the attention of readers.”  As an editor, how do you approach the decision to publish written works from a variety of global perspectives?   Why is it important and timely to have an increasing focus on international authors and publications?

In the simplest sense, publishing fiction from elsewhere and from other languages is like reporting the news—news of what’s going on in those countries, of how people think, of how they imagine the world, of what counts for them as art-- and interesting and important for the same reason.

Tell us a bit about your personal reading and writing interests.  Beyond your work as NYRB’s editorial director, what do you enjoy reading?
 
I read a lot of poetry, most of it by dead people.

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Hi everyone,

As LitMinds continues to grow after our launch four months ago, we wanted to keep you posted (extra points for appreciating the pun) on some of the newest developments in our burgeoning community.  

First, let’s talk about the most exciting new addition: me.  (I hope you’ll come to appreciate my sense of humor.)  As many of you probably know, one of our founders, Carrie, is traveling around Southeast Asia for the summer.  While she’s doing that, I’ve taken over community development for LitMinds – and that means I want to know what you, the members, want from the community.  I’m going to be spending the next several months working with Christin and Praveen to figure out how to make the community bigger and better.  You’ll see me on the boards, doing the bi-weekly interview series, and poking my head into your inbox with our email newsletters.  I’m here to figure out how best to serve the LitMinds members, so let me have it!  Consider this a standing invitation to let me know your comments, questions, suggestions or any other feedback you have.  You can email me at q@litminds.org, post on the Site Feedback board, or send an email to feedback@litminds.org.  

And in the spirit of building the community, I’ll tell you a little bit about myself.  We can start with my name: everybody calls me Q.  Yes, for real.  I even have a Q tattoo.  I also have a dog and a cat, a lot of books, and a compulsive need to make my bed every single morning.  I love not just reading but writing as well, and just finished earning an MFA in Creative Writing – who knows, maybe some day we’ll be discussing one of my own books here.  I recently finished reading yet another Nancy Drew novel (that’s another compulsion), and now I’ve started in on Beowulf, to fill in some gaps in my knowledge of the literary classics.  You can check out more about my reading interests in my profile.  

We also have a host of other changes that you’ve probably noticed.  Now we have profiles for authors and booksellers, as well as readers – so you can browse other members based on what type of user they are – check out just the bookstore owners, or just the writers, or look at everyone at the same time.  You can also get an email sent to you every time someone adds a post to a conversation you’re in – just go to your profile and check the email notification box.  Last but not least, we have a ton of new members since we launched in February, so be sure to keep an eye on Who’s LitMinded.  

Before I sign off, I want to say thanks to all of you for being a part of our community – we couldn’t do this without you.  We’re here to serve you, so let us know how we can make your literary life richer.  And if you’re interested in helping us out, there’s one thing we need more than anything else: to spread the word!  If you have lit-minded friends and family that you think would like our community, please tell them about it.  You can invite them to view your profile, or simply send them the link to the homepage.  Thanks for helping us share the LitMinds love.

That’s all for now – thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the boards!    

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Jessica Stockton, aka BookNerd, is a blogger and bookseller from New York City.  In her blog, The Written Nerd, she talks about everything from her dream of opening a Brooklyn bookstore, to her experiences at BEA (where we were lucky to meet her), to what it’s like working inside the literary world. 

In her interview with LitMinds, we learned about the specifics of selling books in New York and how to change the world, one feminist reading recommendation at a time. 
  

Through your blog, The Written Nerd, you have talked about your goal of opening an independent bookstore in Brooklyn.  What is your vision for the bookstore?  Where are you in the process of pursuing this dream of opening a store?

Wow, the hard question first!  Actually, it's an easy one, though a bit uncomfortable, as is any direct question about one's dreams.  I've fallen in love with Brooklyn as I've fallen in love with the world of independent bookstores, and I think my (adopted) hometown is ripe for a new indie bookstore or two.  My vision for a Brooklyn bookstore is a place that incorporates the borough's neighborhood loyalty, its exploding creative vibe, its history and tradition as well as its progressive sensibilities.  I'd like to create a great general bookstore and a great event space, to host great author events as well as community events, to make a place where people could work and meet and find the hot new title as well as books they've never heard of before.  I'd like to combine the best parts of all the bookstores I've worked in and spent time in: the rich, calm aesthetic of Three Lives in the West Village, the community partnership of Labyrinth Books on the Upper West Side, the energy and scope of McNally Robinson in SoHo.  I want my bookstore to be a paradoxical marriage of the best of tradition and the most cutting edge current ideas, and I think both bookstores and Brooklyn have a lot to offer on both ends.

To put it in practical terms, I want to create a big, general bookstore with an adjacent coffee/wine bar and event space, either next door, in the basement, or otherwise connected.  The store will focus on literature, culture, and design, and have lots of graphic novels, Spanish language books, practical nonfiction, audiobooks, perhaps print on demand books, and lots of other stuff.  Most importantly, the store will be flexible enough to adapt to its neighborhood and customer base.  I can't tell you exactly what that is yet, because there are a couple of different neighborhoods I'm looking at, and each one has its own specific vibe (practically every block in Brooklyn, and in New York, has its specific character, I think).  It will have a staff that loves people as much as books, and give great customer service.  And it will make money because I have done my research. =)

Right now I'm in the business plan writing stage of my process.  I've spent the last five years doing field research (i.e. working in bookstore), and now I'm doing the financial and business research.  I'm getting married at the end of June, so immediate plans have been put on hold, but I'd like to open the store in the next year or two if I can get the funding together (and there are lots of good, supportive organizations that make that seem very possible).  So it won't be before 2008, but I'll keep you posted!

You work at an indie bookstore in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood and live in Brooklyn.  Each of these areas has a distinct and thriving artistic community.  How would you describe the differences between the “vibes” of SoHo and Brooklyn?  What writers and books do you feel represent the voices of these neighborhoods?

Good question!  Every store where I've worked has a slightly different vibe, and it has to do mostly with the neighborhood demographics, though some with the personalities of the store's owners and buyers.  We sell a lot of art, photography, fashion and design books in SoHo; it's a very creative neighborhood, and very affluent.  The "urban arts" section is an expanding one, with books on graffiti and skateboard culture.  We sell magazines too, so we do a brisk trade in celebrity tabloids.  The literature is the cornerstone of the store, and we purposefully focus on international literature, which is both a passion of the store's owner and logical choice given the large international tourist audience in SoHo.  Representative books and writers?  WALL AND PIECE by British graffiti artist Banksy has been a huge bestseller for us.  SUITE FRANCAISE, translated from the French, has sold hugely because of recommendations.  And the biography of Anna Wintour has also had surprisingly long legs.

As I implied in the first question, I think the notion of a neighborhood vibe can't necessarily be applied to Brooklyn as a whole; it's a huge place, after all, with neighborhoods as distinctive as Fort Greene, Sunset Park, Prospect/Lefferts Gardens, Boerum Hill, Bay Ridge, Coney Island, and on and on. Many areas have a similar street culture vibe to SoHo, though there are others that could be said focus more on progressive parenting, and others that are still very traditional.  Jonathan Lethem, Pete Hamill, Shelley Jackson, Walt Whitman, Paul Auster, and hundreds of other writers (not to mention artists) represent the creative spirit of the borough.  I'm looking forward to settling in to a bookstore in a neighborhood and getting a feel for what readers are looking for.  I would venture to say that there's a certain informal, DIY spirit in Brooklyn that's hard to get away with in posher areas of Manhattan, but again, it's kind of a neighborhood-by-neighborhood thing.

There has been a recent debate raging around book critics in traditional and new media sources – most notably the shrinking job market for newspaper book reviewers and the rise of literary bloggers.  You recently posed questions on The Written Nerd to readers about this issue, asking them to share where they get their book reviews.  Based on readers’ responses as well as your experiences as a literary blogger and independent bookstore employee, what trends do you see in how people get their book reviews and recommendations?  Are there points in this debate that are not getting coverage in the recent news stories?

As I asserted in my blog this past week, I think the biggest problem with the current debate is that it tends to pitch bloggers and newspaper reviewers as enemies competing for the same readers.  In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth.  I haven't stopped reading newspaper reviews because I've started reading blogs; my range of options for reviews has just expanded, and I've been able to see different reviewers as in conversation with each other about the books we all care about. 

I think the true danger to skilled and widespread professional reviews, as to independent bookstores and book culture in general, is increased corporate conglomeration that leads to myopic focus on the bottom line.  I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything, but it seems to me that as the media companies get bigger, important decisions about what they put out are being are increasingly made by corporate execs with little or no connection to what's going on down on the  ground.  When publishing company executives decide it's more important (i.e., financially advisable in the short term) to pay for front-of-store placement in chain bookstores than to take out advertisements that support book review sections, they hurt book culture at large, and ultimately don't even serve their own companies well.  I hope that the grassroots efforts of both bloggers and organizations like the NBCC can draw attention to the need to tend to the overall health of book culture in order for everyone – bloggers, reviewers, publishers, bookstores, newspapers – to continue to prosper.

You plan author readings and literary events at the independent bookstore you work for in SoHo.  In April, you wrote an interesting piece, “In Defense of Author Events.” Tell us about a couple author readings or literary events you have participated in that stand out as especially interesting or enjoyable.  What makes for a successful author event and how would you improve or change them?

Ooh, a fun one.  We recently hosted Valentino Achak Deng, who collaborated with Dave Eggers on WHAT IS THE WHAT, and we probably had 120 people listening in rapt silence to this soft-spoken man talk about the complex politics of Sudan.  But we had an equally large crowd when local publisher Martha Rhodes of Four Way Books threw a party for several of her authors, none of whom are household names – hundreds of people laughing, drinking, and listening to poetry, and ALL of them bought books!

I've found that the key to well-attended author events is being gracious to local authors who have lots of fans and friends who want to come out to support them.  Of course, it's good for the store's reputation to have big literary names, and it's always exciting to host hip, cutting edge authors.  But I've found that some of the most enjoyable events have been smaller crowds, where the author really gets a chance to engage in conversation with those who are interested in his or her work.  I love having a wide variety of events in the store, from audio-visual presentations to author/editor conversations to panel discussions to standard Q&A sessions.  They all bring in new audiences (and potential customers) to the bookstore, which is my definition of a successful event.

 
If you could make a book recommendation to some specific person(s), what book would it be, to whom, and why?

I'd love to recommend some of the great women authors I've been reading to some famously misogynistic male literary figures.  I think John Updike (who seems to be unaware that women have thoughts as well as bodies) should read THE LAST OF HER KIND, an American epic by Sigrid Nunez, or Rebecca Solnit's breathtaking chain of familiar essays FIELD GUIDE TO GETTING LOST.  I would love for Christopher Hitchens (who has said that women aren't funny) to encounter the hilarious surreality of Shelley Jackson's Siamese twin novel HALF LIFE, or Roz Chast's side-splitting cartoon collection THEORIES OF EVERYTHING.  I'd love for every female-phobic sci-fi/fantasy fanboy to read Kelly Link's magic surrealist fables in MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS and Susanna Clarke's Dickensian English fantasy novel JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL.  There's nothing like reading fiction, which has no overt political agenda, to get someone to let their guard down and imagine life in someone else's skin – I think the public discourse would become more civilized if we did a little more reading across gender lines.

Who's your favorite living author?

David Mitchell, British author of Ghostwritten, Number 9 Dream, Cloud Atlas (my favorite) and Black Swan Green.  He not only writes my favorite kind of fiction – experimental, magical, but always readable, and ultimately compassionate and moral – he also turns out to be the nicest, smartest guy you could ever hope to meet.  I pitch his books every chance I get, so thanks for giving me another chance!

 

You can read Jessica's LitMinds profile here and discuss this interview here.   

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Hooray for press coverage!  LitMinds founders Christin and Praveen were featured in a headline story in industry journal Publishers Weekly today. 

The first half of the article focuses primarily on the Booksmith, the independent bookstore in San Francisco that Christin and Praveen just bought.  The second half talks about our favorite online literary community, LitMinds.org.  

Take a look and let us know what you think!

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6449438.html

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Ann Kent is the founder of Book Group Expo, an annual two-day conference that brings together serious readers and their passions—books, food, wine and conversation.  Born out of her experiences with her own reading group, Book Group Expo allows books lovers to spend two days in the company of their peers, discussing all things book-related in intimate, salon-style settings.  This year’s conference will take place June 8th – 10th at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California.  

We caught up with Ann before this year’s expo to talk about how the event was created, what’s in store for this year, and what book clubs are really about.     


This is the second year you’ve made a significant investment of your time to organize Book Group Expo.  Can you tell us more about your motivation behind starting the conference?

My motivation was really to share the rich social experience of a book group gathering.  I am a relative “newbie” in the book group world, having only joined a group about 3 years ago.  I was intrigued by my own behavior and relationship with my book group.  I scheduled my business travel around my book group.  I did NOT want to miss a get-together!  My own intrigue led me to asking others about books and their book clubs – people I was working with across the country in business.  And as I asked more questions, some common themes emerged.  What we had in common was a casual gathering of people (mostly women), every 4-6 weeks in someone’s home, at a library or in a restaurant where we had great experiences and unpredictable conversations.  We didn’t always agree.  In fact, sometimes the conversation could get downright heated!  But we openly shared opinions and perspectives and whatever happened, left as friends.  We could really disagree, not see eye-to-eye and still enjoy each other’s company.  This experience was consistent in EVERY conversation I had. And I found that amazing.  Of course what we also had in common was having good food and drink.  These gatherings of planned spontaneity, if you will, were so enjoyable and enriching I wanted to broaden and duplicate the experience for others to enjoy. I wanted to bring some of these conversations out in the public space.  THAT was my motivation, and with it a celebration of the different things that make our lives, certainly my life, so rich:  books, friends, conversations, good wine, more conversations.


How will this year's expo build on the success that you had last year?  Are there any specific additions to this year’s schedule that we should look forward to?

Last year was a first time event that we really planned in less than 6 months.  Even though the attendee and author feedback was very positive, there are always things we can do better.  By design, I did NOT want this to be an author reading or another book fair.  Those are great experiences, but they already exist.  One of the things I wanted to do last year was re-introduce this concept of a literary salon.  We created living room settings on stage with couches and chairs. By duplicating the casual and inviting mood of a book group, the audience was invited “into conversation” with the authors.  These salons are topic-specific, not book-specific.  I am committed to this modern salon format, as it is key to book group expo and will be a consistent component of anything we do.  So absolutely more of that!  Attendees liked how we “mixed and matched” authors.  Most of our authors have not met each other, so it is a spontaneous opportunity for them as well.  An important addition is more salons that are specific to book groups -- the how to’s of book selection, handling conflict and book group behavior topics.  Last year, people requested more of that and we are presenting some great salons for them.


What were some of the surprises and highlights of last year’s event?  

Clearly last year’s “Book Club from Hell” was a memorable moment.  It was an impromptu skit and we were not quite sure how it would go, but it really did rock the room.  For those of us in book clubs, there are, indeed, some stereotypes.  We had each of those represented on the stage and the biggest nay-sayer of the book being discussed (Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club) was a woman who thought the book was “Over-Done!” “Not Accurate!” and “Mommy Dearest Revisited!”  The woman turned out to be the author: Amy Tan in disguise -- poking fun at herself.  When she did her reveal, the room roared.  What the attendees knew was that whoever was behind this book group expo, really was in a book group.  And for me, that was a huge compliment – to be recognized as an authentic book group community member.

We will do something again this year that the audience may not be expecting – humor is a part of our book clubs, too!


This year’s event assembles a tremendous cast of authors – are there criteria you use to decide on whom to invite to the event?  Have book groups around the Bay Area weighed in on authors they’d like to meet?

Ahh.  CRITERIA!  I get that question a lot.  Our first year, we were asking people to participate.  This year, well, the submissions have been tremendous and it is a wonderful array of choices to sort through.  My audience is a book club audience.  That is the focus.  We all know that those of us in book clubs and reading groups read a variety of works, but for book group expo, it is about the book group.  That’s important to remember.  The first layer of the decision tree is whether a book is “discussable.”  Right?  We want to be able to have a conversation about the book.  Once we make that decision, then we need to cluster the book into a topic that is of interest to our community.  We received a lot of feed-back from last year’s attendees, and the nearly 3000 members of our on-line community.  They are telling us about their interests and making requests of what they want to learn more about.  And I have my own ideas, too (and I DO get a vote!).

So, we have possible books.  Then we have topics and how the books relate within those topics.  It isn’t an easy yes or no.  We take a lot of time and care to sort through choices.  And it’s hard – there are some terrific books that don’t always fit in to the 18 – 20 literary salons.  

We started accepting submissions last fall and will do the same starting this September as well.  What some people do not realize is that we are fairly secure in our line-up by early March.  We have to be!  We need to coordinate schedules, and select the right moderators.

We also really want to support emerging authors and first time authors.  This is an egalitarian effort and that is reflected in how we put the literary salons together as well.

A lot of preparation goes into book group expo.  This is my passion project and what happens in the literary salons is very important to me. It matters to me that the authors and the attendees both leave having had a great interaction.

I get the sense that chocolate and wine are an important part of the event.  Can you tell us more about the role food plays during Book Group Expo?

The chocolate and wine are likely as much about Ann Kent as they are about book clubs, reading groups and book group expo.  It started when my own group poked fun at itself for being a pour-ly disguised wine-drinking group.  We were enthusiastic about the book and seeing each other – and equally enthusiastic about what new wine we might discover!  And by the close of each get–together, there was inevitably chocolate on the table.  In conversations I was having with people all over the country about their book groups, I would sometimes just ask, “Are you more of a red wine group or white wine?”  That ALWAYS got a chuckle! (As if that was the secret handshake or something).  One group did say they were more of a martini crowd, though.

So how does this all relate to book group expo?  This is an experience for all of the senses.  I want to enrich our minds, our hearts and our palates!  As with my own book group, I want to stimulate thoughts and conversations.  And I want people to have FUN!  I want people to really celebrate.  And for some reason, good food and good drink seems to pair up with that very nicely.  

And just for clarification, there are many reading groups that do not include food or wine as a part of their experience.  But that’s the beauty of book groups -- we can create whatever we want them to be!  Pretty cool.


Why Book Group Expo and not some other book-related activity?   

If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever be involved in something like this I would have said absolutely not!  Creating a book-related experience was not even on my “Top 100 things I need to do before I’m 50.”  So, for me, this isn’t exclusively a book-related activity.  I know that sounds odd, but it isn’t just about the books. Books are what bring people – community – together.

This is about creating an experience that relates to community.  I really am committed to bringing more of these conversations that happen in our living rooms and dining rooms into a public space.  I love to see people connect with each other – laugh, talk, discuss – really interact.  That happened last year with readers AND with authors.  It even happened within the group of volunteers that helped make all of this happen!  Through book group expo, I am able to support small businesses/entrepreneurs (marketplace experience and independent book sellers), introduce readers to authors they might never meet, and help facilitate conversations and relationships that extend far beyond these two days.  Pretty cool.  Lucky me.

I love facilitating the spontaneous dynamic of interaction – of creating community.

So why book group expo and not something else?  Well, this is just a great fit for creating a total experience. And besides, my book group helps me on this one!!

 

You can discuss Book Group Expo and this interview on the message boards here. 

 

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Four years ago, Maggie Messitt was an American journalist working on stories from the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., to the holiday shopping season.  After “test-driving” this career and realizing it wasn’t for her, she left it all behind and bought a one-way ticket to South Africa.  Now, she works as a journalist for North American Publications and is the Founding Director of Amazwi, a nonprofit organization that uses storytelling as a basis for empowerment, preservation and education in South Africa.  

We caught up with Maggie this week and asked her to tell us about her move to South Africa, the work that Amazwi is doing, and her literary inspirations.


1. Four years ago, you left behind most of your material possessions and moved from the U.S. to Africa.  You have since started the organization Amazwi and now live in Hoedspruit in the Limpopo province of South Africa.  Can you share with us how you came to reside in a fairly remote part of South Africa and start a nonprofit? How has your understanding of this part of the world changed during the last several years?

It’s a very long story with several twists—one that I may have the courage and energy to write down a few decades from now.   In short, I fell in love with a people, a land, and the opportunity to write stories from a nation so foreign to me, with a tumultuous history that I couldn’t and still can’t comprehend.  It’s a place with such clear divisions of poverty and wealth, white and black, love and hate, sickness and health, hope and despair.  As a writer, there are so many stories to be told with a diversity of voices that collectively illustrate a very complicated picture—I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity.  At the time I was in a transitory phase, and it was an easy place to start a full-time freelance career.  My initial move was only for 18 months, so I figured I should try stepping out of the city and into a rural village.  Tucked between Kruger National Park and the Drakensberg Escarpment, Hoedspruit could offer me the adventure I always craved and situate me just north of the former Lebowa and Gazankulu apartheid-era homelands, where I knew a treasure trove of narratives were waiting to be written.
    The vision of Amazwi came while helping a small rural newspaper that had found itself without an editor.  I saw a tiny publication—imperative in the chain of rural communication—in major need of skilled writers who could represent the communities reading its pages.  The next thing I knew, the idea for Amazwi was scribbled on paper, I received a grant to test it out, and I was standing in the middle of a rural Zulu village teaching fieldwork, piloting the project.  It all happened very fast.
    My understanding of South Africa and the southern part of this continent has changed on so many levels.  And with each day my perspective and understanding morphs and twists into something new.  Parachute journalism makes major issues like AIDS, poverty, and education that much more complicated and misunderstood, and sometimes living here makes it that much more challenging to write.  Each issue has more layers than an onion to peel, coating culture on top of history on top of genderism and the poverty line, on top of resource issues and corruption problems, and dictatorship or something they’re calling democracy.  I could live here a lifetime and never really understand it all, only uncovering a nugget from the mine of narratives waiting to be told.


2. Your organization, Amazwi, focuses on the art of “nonfiction storytelling.”  Can you explain how you define this genre?  What is distinctive and important about this form of art?  How might nonfiction storytelling build on the legacy of African narrative?

Defining the genre of nonfiction storytelling, creative nonfiction, literary journalism or whatever name you wish to give it is quite difficult in these controversial days of memoir, personal essay, and reportage.  And at the same time it is quite simple.  Storytelling is just that—the telling of a story.  And nonfiction is the glorious genre of truth telling, documenting real life.   
    I am on the very conservative side of the nonfiction genre.  I do not believe in the grey line.  I do not believe in stretching reality to fit my purpose.  I don’t believe in fabricating characters or dialogue or details.  If a writer tells me an antenna was crooked, it better have been crooked.  With the label of nonfiction comes a credibility that fiction cannot muster.  When I read nonfiction, I invest in the ‘characters’ on a different level because I know that they are ‘real’ and I trust the author as a narrator of truth.
    Although my personal focus of nonfiction storytelling is literary in nature, every medium and art has its own way of addressing nonfiction.  And currently, several powerful nonfiction projects framed within Southern Africa illustrate the power of narrative across mediums including Tembi’s AIDS Diary, A Day in the Life of Africa, Create Africa South, and Latifah’s blog.
    The legacy of Africa has been built on the foundation of storytelling.  Cultures have been preserved through oral history.  Artists across the continent of modern art and traditional craft narrate life today and the life of yesterday.  Although nonfiction and cultural storytelling are so deeply embedded in African life and history, I find irony stepping into African journalism conferences where people are still debating whether narrative is a waste of space or good journalism.  Inside the walls of Amazwi, we feel it is not a waste of space, rather it is what should fill local papers, encouraging people to read, enticing people to think about their own communities on a deeper level, and documenting life with greater depth.


3. One of your major projects is the Amazwi School of Media Arts, where rural African women learn journalism in a 10-month program.  Why have you chosen to focus on this population?  What are your goals for these young women upon completion of the program?

Rural African woman are both culturally and systematically disadvantaged, yet they hold the greatest power in changing the world around them.  As many people have said over time, “…when you educate a woman, you educate the whole nation.”  Our pilot proved that sons and daughters who see their mother working hard and studying follow in her footsteps.  They value education in a different way.  They show respect for the work their mother is doing, and they start to think differently.
    My long-term vision is to develop a campus of nonfiction storytellers where woman from rural villages across southern Africa come together to work with mentors, professionals of all ages from the US, Australia, and Europe, on a low-residency basis to learn the craft of reportage, writing, and narrative.  But, obviously, visions need smaller starts, and that is where we are currently—we have started with fifteen Shangaan and Sotho woman from in and around the large village of Acornhoek.
    Our goals for Amazwi students are endless.  Throughout the year, our students gain hands-on experience reporting & writing for The Amazwi Villager, our quarterly regional publication sponsored by the Lonely Planet Foundation. The first official class will graduate in December, and we will work with them to obtain internship/entry level placements or continue to mentor them through the process of a freelance career.  With so many of our students being mothers, our hope is to help them build a flexible writing lifestyle, allowing them the security of an income, the ability to live and work where their children reside, while also reporting within their community, culture, and region.  If we have students who decide that journalism is not for them, they’ll be able to apply for jobs in the region for which they would never have qualified prior to their intensive reporting, writing, and language work with Amazwi.


4. In October 2007, you are planning to launch a.magazine, which will be available in US bookstores as well as to subscribers anywhere in the world.  Tell us a bit about this literary publication and what will be unique about it.  Can you offer us a taste of the work that will appear in it?

a.magazine is a part of Amazwi that has truly evolved over time.  I wanted to develop a publication for people outside of the continent to read in-depth stories being written from inside African countries they were familiar with, as well as those they’d never heard of or couldn’t point to on a map.  I wanted to provide a platform for both African and non-African writers to publish well-written narratives on issues that generally are only covered by parachute journalism or not at all.  I felt like there needed to be something out there working to dispel the myths, diversify people’s perspectives, and foster a fuller understanding of Africa, its nations, and its people. a.magazine addresses one of the most accurate quotes I’ve ever hear about continent, “The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it.”  
    What has developed in the last six months since our editorial team arrived in South Africa is an independent publication with style, intellect, and real literary quality.   We’re working to bring what’s new, beautiful, important, and pressing on the continent into your home.
    Each issue will strike a balance of both established and emerging writers and artists with diverse perspectives. We’re working to attract African writers like Zakes Mda, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Binyavanga Wainaina, Alexandra Fuller, and Greg Marinovich, as well as non-African writers like Paul Salopek, William Finnegan, and Melissa Fay Greene.
    a.magazine will be sold exclusively through independent bookstores in the US and Canada as a way to support the great work that indies do daily.  Like a.magazine, independent bookstores nurture readers, build communities of writers and artists, and introduce their followers to new, distinct voices that they might not have found on their own.  


5. There are several journalists and authors you credit as having influenced your work as a writer and journalist.  Please share with us some of the writers who have been most formative for you and which written works you would recommend to others.

Maya Angelou and Sandra Cisneros were my two greatest influences as a young person with dreams of writing.  They showed me how to play with words and tell stories.  I remember using both of their works as my own personal playground, dissecting their words, trying to understand the deeper meaning or learning how to use figurative language to paint layered detail.  I think I’ve read The House on Mango Street several dozen times, and it is something I’ve used with budding writers across generations.
    As I became more comfortable with my own writing and exploring other people’s writing, it was evident that my real love was for true stories, stories about everyday people dealing with everyday problems.  Even further than that, I sunk my teeth into work with greater human issues. Authors like William Finnegan, Phillip Gourevich, Anne Fadiman, Xinran Xue, Gay Talese, Thomas French, Jonathon Kozol, Alex Kotlowitz, and Ted Conover caught my attention for their stories and techniques.  And I can’t discount the influence witness poetry has had over my writing, specifically Carolyn Forche’s work.
    I am always reading two books—one for craft and the other for story.  A mentor and friend of mine often reminds me that I’ve read more books on craft than any person he knows, so I suppose I shouldn’t discount these in my list.  I find that keeping the art and craft of writing on the brain helps me through the process and keeps me thinking.  I’d say these are my continuous favorites: Jon Franklin’s Write for Story, Roy Peter Clarke’s Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, Dennis O’Neill’s The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, Robert Boynton’s New New Journalism, and Tom Wolfe’s 1975 New Journalism.


6. As a writer, you express a desire to tell the stories, “within the fringe of society and beyond, within the forgotten communities or communities that have never had the chance to be forgotten, within people misunderstood or with those we have never tried to understand.”  Tell us about a couple stories you are most proud of writing that you feel accomplished this goal.  What are some stories about Africa that are not being shared with the global community?  What other writers are currently working to tell these stories?

I’ve worked on stories that had me sleeping on everything from an apartment floor in DC’s Anacostia Public Housing to the dung floor of a rondavel in the mountainous country of Lesotho.  But I’d have to say there is one project I’m most proud of to date, and it’s still inside my computer (making my hair turn gray!).
I’ve spent the last two years working on an immersion project, and I am sitting here at the editing phase of my first book-length work.  This multi-threaded narrative follows the lives of three generations inside a small rural community of Shangaan, Sotho, and Mozambican Tsonga families.  For ten months, I followed a tapestry weaver in her sixties, standing at the crossroads where her faith and the AIDS pandemic crash; a traditional healer and Shebeen owner in her forties, turning her illegal backdoor pub into a legal tavern; and a young man in his early twenties taking his matriculation exams and finding his way in life.
    This project has allowed me to open a window to the vicissitudes of life within rural South Africa, unknot a few of the cultural binds that complicate the AIDS pandemic, peek inside the gender issues that makes South Africa the most dangerous nation for women, and narrate the dreams, journeys, and basic needs of three generations within a single, peaceful community.  
    Gay Talese once said, “I believe the most average life is extraordinary, if you can just get to the truth of it. Artists of nonfiction can bring to people an enlarged clarification of their lives.”  This, I believe, gets to the crux of quality nonfiction storytelling, and this is what I am after in my own writing.
    As far as what stories still need to be told, I think it’s more of an issue as to how they are being told.  More in-depth narratives need to be produced for people outside of the continent to understand the complicated layers behind issues that are generally the subject of parachute reporting.  Serial narratives like the recent Baltimore Sun series by Scott Calvert (“Tested in Soweto”) and articles like the New Yorker article by Mark Spencer (“The Denialists”) are imperative for developing a more accurate understanding of issues facing Africans daily.   On the side of African writers, I think that e-health editor and writer Kerry Cullinan has made valiant efforts toward increasing health narratives in Southern Africa.  

You can read Maggie's LitMinds profile here and discuss this interview here.   

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