Images of Books & Authors in Unexpected Places

Every year in December, I head off to Fifth Avenue to tour the gorgeous holiday window displays. This year, my traditional seasonal trek had a happy addition: Harlem's 125th Street! I was like a kid in a candy store, as several stores on Harlem's 125th Street showcased gorgeous holiday windows. Expecting to see the usual festive creations of glamorous gowns and dressed-to-the-nines mannequins; snow-filled dioramas; old-fashioned toys for miniature girls and boys; and the usual Christmas scenes, what a wonder-filled surprise to find instead, books and authors inspiring the holidays this year!

Fifth Avenue

Bergdorf Goodman offered windows on Architecture, Music, Painting, Theatre, and my favorite, Arts & Literature.

Literature themed holiday window at Bergdorf Goodman - December 2014. Photo Credit: Ricky Zehavi

Can you find Frederick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley among the many iconic writers featured in the window?

Harlem

Uptown, a Harlem store's fanciful window shimmered with a quote from Zora Neale Hurston, one of my most cherished writers. The images of Hurston and Langston Hughes, standing stand-by-side in the Yoga Land window display, made me smile.

Photos of legendary authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston in a winter holiday themed window at Yoga Land in Harlem. Photo credit: DNAinfo/Gustavo Solis

Then, a happy thought came to me; all good wishes are sent forth – to everyone -- in this glorious holiday season!

Tour Bergdorf Goodman's holiday windows. 

Tour the Harlem stores' holiday windows.

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Each month, I'll share images of books and authors that I come upon in unexpected places. It's all to inspire you to experience, as if for the first time, the wonder of books and their creators.

Hit me up on Twitter @LuvonRwriter!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am all about the written word and I love a good discussion about great books. As What's The 411TV's Book Editor, I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion when I visited The Riverside Book Club at The Riverside Church in Manhattan on Saturday, September 13, 2014.

The Riverside Book Club meeting od September 13, 2014

The book under discussion:

HARLEM NOCTURNE: Women Artists & Progressive Politics During World War II
(New York: Basic Civitas, 2013)

Author: Farah Jasmine Griffin

www.farahjasminegriffin.com

Overview: HARLEM NOCTURNE

As World War II raged overseas, Harlem witnessed a battle of its own. Brimming with creative and political energy, Harlem's diverse array of artists and activists launched a bold cultural offensive aimed at winning democracy for all Americans, regardless of race or gender. In HARLEM NOCTURNE, esteemed scholar, Farah Jasmine Griffin, tells the stories of three black female artists whose creative and political efforts fueled this movement for change: novelist Ann Petry, a major new literary voice; choreographer and dancer Pearl Primus, a pioneer in her field; and composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams, a prominent figure in the emergence of Bebop.

Author Farah Jasmine Griffin listens intently as members of The Riverside Book Club discuss her book, HARLEM NOCTURNE: Women Artists & Progressive Politics During World War II

As Griffin shows, these women made enormous strides for social justice during the war, laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement before the Cold War temporarily froze their democratic dreams. HARLEM NOCTURNE captures a period of unprecedented vitality and progress for African Americans and women in the United States.

(This overview is taken from: www.farahjasminegriffin.com)

My Take-Away from The Riverside Book Club's discussion:

HARLEM NOCTURNE sparks memories for book club members who either lived in Harlem during the 1940s or who recall being told stories about that time in Harlem. Oral history keeps the stories of Harlem's history alive and vibrant, even in the face of enormous change today, with Harlem's gentrification.

Meeting Info: The Riverside Book Club meets every month on the 2nd Saturday, from 11am to 1pm.

Contact: Mary Biggs at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to learn more about The Riverside Book Club

Invite What's The 411TV Book Editor, Luvon Roberson, to your next book club meeting!

Contact her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or @LuvonRwriter on Twitter.

First Sighting at Harlem Book Fair; Second at NYU.

Tiphanie Yanique. I first met her at the Harlem Book Fair's Fiction Festival, held at Columbia University in July 2014. Yanique is on a panel called Coming from Far: Caribbean Writers on Home and Otherness. Her book, LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, published by Riverhead/ Penguin, is just hitting bookstores – and the world. Over the next hour and a half, she tells us secrets that too often authors keep hidden. Not only the secrets about her how her family influenced her book, but the secrets about how writers create:

Yanique disclosed that many in her Virgin Island family didn't want her to write her book as she initially envisioned it. It revealed too much, better kept inside the family.

Yanique talked about how she was caught in the tangle of love of family on the one hand, and the irrepressible need for her own voice to break free, on the other.

Ultimately, it took Yanique several years to at last find a way to tell her story, by accommodating her family's need for privacy and her desire for self-expression.

That time of flux must have been painful for her loved ones – and for her.

Next Sighting of Yanique...

Now, several months later, I am listening to Yanique read from LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, the book that came out of her time of struggle. We are at New York University, in a lovely townhouse – the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House. People file in, quickly filling up the chairs. I'm beneath the steep staircase, rising along a wall that's lined with framed photographic portraits of acclaimed writers who gaze out like orishas: Toni Morrison is among them.

Can Yanique see those writer-creators from where she stands at the podium, before the filled-to-capacity audience?

She begins by paying homage to NYU for providing space exclusively for writers, with its Lillian Vernon House, and by giving "gratitude" for her years in this space as a student. It's here when she reveals that it took her 11 years to write the book. I recall her revelations in July, as part of the Harlem Book Fair panel about her struggle to create the book. I did not know it took so long. Eleven years to write LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING!

At the reading, she reveals that her grandmother, not her parents, raised her, and says "my aunts and cousin fed me." They threatened to "disown" her after reading the manuscript she sent them, nine years into writing the book. "I made the changes they needed me to make. I think I made a richer book because of it."

Yanique says the book, set between 1916 to late-1960s, parallels "what's going on in Ferguson" today. And, that this 50-year timeframe is "in my mind, when the Virgin Islands become Americanized. Along comes World War II and then the Civil Rights Movement. It gave Virgin Islands the opportunity to be 'American.'" I'm wondering: How does she tell this story, this complicated duality? Is it tied to her own?

Later after the reading, during the Q & A, Yanique says "my narrator is multiple. I have three other narrators, first-person narrators. The same event is seen in different ways: They actually see other things that another person doesn't see." She believes her book frames "What it means to be American – and to tell your story. To tell your narrative." These multiple narrators help us recognize, she says, "Virgin Islanders are African-American. There are more versions: Northern, Southern. There is a multiplicity of versions of understanding the African-American experience."

What's The 411TV Book Editor, Luvon Roberson (left) chatting with Tiphanie Yanique, author of LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, prior to her talk at NYU's Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House.

My Favorite Author Quips & Snippets

Here's a quick pick of my favorite comments made by Tiphanie Yanique at her book reading at New York University, on September 12, 2014.

"Magic is real."

"A parent's first magic is naming."

"I feel like a responsible human being. I do think of politics, race, social justice. Politics, race, gender, and the natural environment. I think of them as craft structures. I feel free by those forms. I know that I'm participating in that form."

"I have two kids now. If my daughter is sleeping, I try to write. It might be five minutes, it may be 10 minutes, and I'm grateful."

BIO: Tiphanie Yanique

Tiphanie Yanique lives in Brooklyn and she is the author of the novel LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, (Riverhead/Penguin 2014), and the short story collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, published by Graywolf Press, 2010.

BookPage listed her as one of the 14 Women to Watch Out For in 2014. Her writing has won the 2011 BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Fiction, Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an Academy of American Poet's Prize. Yanique has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of the 16 cultural figures to watch out for and by the National Book Foundation as one of the 5 Under 35. Her writing has been published in Best African American Fiction, The Wall Street Journal, American Short Fiction among others.

Tiphanie Yanique is Assistant Professor of Writing at The New School. For additional information about author Tiphanie Yanique, visit www.tiphanieyanique.com.

What's The 411TV on the Red Carpet at the 65th Annual National Book Awards

Do you think you'll ever stop writing? When I stop breathing. –Jacqueline Woodson, Winner, 2014 National Book Award, YA Literature [www.jacquelinewoodson.com]

The Red Carpet. Books. Awards. Prestige. These elements come together every year at the National Book Awards ceremony, the nation's most distinguished literary prizes -- with winners nabbing $10,000 and catapulting into a 250-watt brighter writing career. Here's where you will find all the beautiful people in the book industry gathered in one magnificent setting to mix and mingle, broker publishing deals, and honor the most acclaimed writers.

The stakes are high and anxiety-filled. It's a buildup of suspense as the finalists are announced about a month before the Awards event. They each win $1,000 and a medal. Then, it's edge-of-your-seat guessing who the winners are, because even the judges don't know until they meet for lunch on the afternoon of the National Book Awards ceremony!

But, now the suspense is over. We know that Jacqueline Woodson won this year's National Book Award in young people's literature, for Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin). She is the author of 30 books, a two-time National Book Awards finalist, and winner of three Newberry Honor Medals. The other winners are Phil Klay (Fiction); Evan Osnos (Non-Fiction); and Louise Glück (Poetry).

Begun in 1950, the 65th National Book Awards ceremony is not only being called one of the most high-energy, glitzy events in its history, but also will long be remembered for generating some high-visibility buzz.

Overwhelmingly, the buzz surrounds a comment about Ms. Woodson made by Daniel Handler, this year's National Book Awards host. If you'd like more on that, read Ms. Woodson's response in The New York Times, where she has her say, in her own words. What's The 411TV's spotlight is focused on the books and their creators whom I spoke with on the red carpet at this year's National Book Awards.

Spotlight on 3 Writers and Their Winning Books: Jacqueline Woodson. Claudia Rankine. Fred Moten

I want to shine the light where it belongs – on three African-American writers who illuminate our world through their writing...Jacqueline Woodson and the two finalists in poetry, Claudia Rankine (Citizen: An American Lyric) and Fred Moten (The Feel Trio). I also talked with award-winning author Coe Booth, a judge for the 2009 National Book Awards in young people's literature, who offered insight on how winning books are chosen. One final tidbit: A New York City theme links these shining stars of writing: Woodson currently lives in Brooklyn and Booth in The Bronx, and Rankine grew up in the Big Apple.

Watch What's The 411TV's videos to get in on the star-studded evening where winning writers shimmered and glowed at the National Book Awards ceremony!

VIDEO: Scenes and interviews from the 2014 National Book Awards

...HAVING THEIR SAY: WRITTEN WORDS...
-Read Excerpts from Their Books-

Surrounded by the glamour and excitement, What's The 411TV went live, up close and personal with these outstanding writers, on the red carpet. If you want to learn more about them, off the red carpet, here's what these writing luminaries have to say in their written words...

Jacqueline Woodson. Winner, 2014 National Book Awards, Young People's Literature: Brown Girl Dreaming. Read an excerpt of Brown Girl Dreaming.

Claudia Rankine. Finalist, 2014 National Book Award, Poetry: Citizen: An American Lyric. Read an excerpt of Citizen: An American Lyric

Fred Moten. Finalist, 2014 National Book Award, Poetry: The Feel Trio. Read an excerpt of The Feel Trio.