“Representing the race” remains a prickly issue in black literature By Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond In the 40-plus years since Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck released Pimp, the audience for so-called “street literature” has remained faithful to the genre, making bestsellers of Beck’s contemporaries and successors like Donald Goines, Omar Tyree, Teri Woods, and more recently Sister […]
(News One) — When Ishmael Reed, professor emeritus at California State University-Berkeley, went shopping his book Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the N-Word Breakers to the American publishing establishment, he came away with one nagging question: Are Black writers with a strong left of center political bent an endangered species […]
(Washington Informer) — “I work with words every day and I stand here completely speechless,” said Publisher Raoul Dennis in his remarks as he was recognized and awarded CEO of the Year by the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable. Dennis’ humility was brought on by the influence and strength of the Roundtable’s board–many of the most influential […]
(Reuters) — E-textbooks may be the way of the future for college campuses, but some scrappy companies are banking on the here and now by offering a solution to bring low-cost textbooks to students, and in some ways they’re taking a page out of movie rental company Netflix Inc’s playbook. New college textbooks are a $4.5 […]
Black books are selling well after all
(PublishersWeekly.com) — My decision to self publish evolved gradually. An invitation to contribute a 500-word story for a special section of microfiction in O magazine started me thinking. I’d been observing glumly the shrinking space allotted to fiction in national magazines. Could O’s interest in microfiction, even if it lasted only a single issue, be […]