2020 Dream Book Club News - ‘New Fiction By Women and Non-Binary PoC’ Summer Reading Series

I’m leading a ‘New Fiction By Women and Non-Binary PoC’ Summer Reading Series with the wonderful people at The Reader Berlin. My Reading List includes works by Akwaeke Emezi, Hanya Yanagihara, Diane Evans, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Meena Kandasamy, Sayaka Murata, Leila Slimani, and Celeste Ng.

We’ve been looking at issues of craft, style, language, authorship, as well as the politics of reading in our times, including questions of methodology and canonization. We meet online once every fortnight via Zoom to discuss texts. I host, curate, and moderate an online Slack forum alongside (to make it a fun and immersive experience). I’m delighted to report that my two groups and I have managed to co-create an experience that soft, safe, thoughtful, and inclusive, a space in which readers and writers can exchange ideas on texts as well as what these stories mean to their own lives. Being that so many of the readers are writers themselves, there is a very deliberate focus on craft.

We’re two books in and the conversations so far have been nourishing, fun, expansive, and beautiful. It has been an honour to consider stories and craft during our horrible Covid-19 time. On a personal level, I feel the preciousness of meaningful discussion now more than ever.