In case you were unable to attend BEA/Book Con, the audio of the entire We Need Diverse Books panel is available to listen to here!

Also, I am so, so, so, so, so proud of the campaign deciding to hold a festival soon! I was pushing hard for this during the beginning of the Book Con lack of diversity fiasco so it’s great to see the campaign taking their action a step further, making the new norm and showing the norm how it’s supposed to be done from the very beginning.

Be the change you want to see!

This includes me! Which is why today, I am making a pledge.

I am pledging to be the change I want to see. I am pledging to make sure that half of my book reviews each and every month are diverse books and/or are written by diverse authors. I am pledging as a reader, writer, blogger, (fill in the blank to how this applies to you i.e. librarian, bookseller, etc…) to do what I can from every angle to support diverse books and diverse authors. We all play a part and I pledge to accept mine.

I invite all of you bloggers to join me in taking this pledge. I read diverse books. I review diverse books. But I can do this so much more than I’ve been doing. No, I’m not going to shout from the mountain top each time a book review is a diverse pick. Instead, during my monthly wrap up posts, I will continue to list all of my book reviews and I will also note which reviews were my diverse picks with an asterisk (*). That’s it. Simple. It’s that easy!

Finally, if there’s a diverse book you’d like me to review, feel free to leave a comment or tweet the title & author’s name to me and I’ll get on it!