New York Times bestselling author and physician, Sayantani DasGupta, brilliantly re-imagines the beloved classic, Pride and Prejudice, to reflect the complex, diverse world of American high school culture with her new book Debating Darcy

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Originally trained in pediatrics and public health, Sayantani DasGupta teaches in the Graduate Program in Narrative Medicine, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, all at Columbia University. She writes and speaks on issues of race, gender, health and social justice.

New York Times bestselling author and physician, Sayantani DasGupta, brilliantly re-imagines the beloved classic, Pride and Prejudice, to reflect the complex, diverse world of American high school culture. The book is already receiving rave reviews, and you need not be an Austen-head, to love it and the conversations around the many issues Sayantani weaves in and addresses.

“Studded with references to U.S. and South Asian pop culture as well as Jane Austen–related Easter eggs, DasGupta’s astute, buoyant comedy of manners employs witty, rat-a-tat dialogue alongside social commentary about subjects including classism, colorism, and sexism.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review


“Fiercely feminist and utterly delightful. Jane Austen would be proud.”
—Samira Ahmed, New York Times bestselling author of Internment

New York Times bestselling author, Sayantani DasGupta, brilliantly re-imagines the beloved classic, Pride and Prejudice, to reflect the complex, diverse world of American high school culture, in her bright and funny YA debut, DEBATING DARCY (on sale April 19, 2022 |Scholastic Press). Set against the ultra-competitive world of speech and debate tournaments, DEBATING DARCY blends hilarious, light writing with pertinent issues impacting young people today,such as the class conflict between private school Darcy and public school Leela, toxic masculinity, and the #MeToo movement.


It is a truth universally acknowledged that Leela Bose plays to win. A life-long speech competitor, Leela loves nothing more than crushing the competition, all while wearing a smile. But when she meets the incorrigible Firoze Darcy, a debater from an elitist private school, Leela can’t stand him. Unfortunately, he’ll be competing in the state league, so their paths are set to collide. But why attempt to tolerate Firoze when Leela can one-up him? The situation is more complicated than Leela anticipated, though, and her participation in the tournament reveals that she might have tragically misjudged the debaters -- including Firoze Darcy -- and more than just her own winning streak is at stake…her heart is, too.

A feminist manifesto that would make Jane Austen herself proud, DEBATING DARCY is a must read for teenagers, gatekeepers, and fans of the beloved classic everywhere.


Dear Reader,

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice’s Lizzie and Darcy are among the most iconic examples of enemies-to-lovers couples. In Austen’s original 1813 novel, the pair bicker, fight, and debate their way into falling in love—so it made perfect sense to me to set my modern reimagining in the ultra-competitive world of high school speech and debate tournaments.

I am a huge Austen-head. I’ve read Pride and Prejudice umpteen times and seen every possible stage, TV and movie adaptation. Maybe my love of Jane Austen comes from my being a daughter of Indian immigrants. There are certainly a lot of similarities between the way that Austen characters obsess over eligible matches and the central role of marriage in many Desi communities. Yet, although Leela and Darcy—the protagonists of this novel—are both South Asian Americans, that’s not my central impulse for writing this story.

The themes of Pride and Prejudice I wanted to explore in this novel include the class conflict between private school Darcy and public school Leela; the importance of being willing to change your mind about someone and not give into prejudice; as well as toxic masculinity and sexism. Although Wickham, the lying, womanizing villain of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, preys on much younger women, there is no space in the original novel for those teenage girls to fight back in any public way. I wanted my modern, feminist characters to say all the things that their 1813 counterparts could not, and in doing so, honor the #metoo stories being shared by many brave high schoolers, including speech and debate competitors, in an effort to make these spaces more welcoming, equitable and just.

This is a novel that celebrates the power of finding your community and speaking your truth, even when it’s scary. It’s a novel about knowing we are all worthy of taking up space in the world. In between the wit and banter, the complex debate topics and funny musical theater references, this is ultimately a story about justice and honor, friendship and love.

So, dear reader, whether you have, like me, read and watched versions of Pride and Prejudice a zillion times, or really never heard of it until now, I hope you find power, laughter, courage and joy in these pages.

Words matter. Art matters. Debating the issues that affect our lives matters. Your voice matters. YOU matter. And love—in all its beautiful romantic and nonromantic derivations—matters most of all.

- Sayantani 

SAYANTANI DASGUPTA is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed, Bengali folktale and string theory-inspired Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond books, the first of which -- The Serpent's Secret -- was a Booklist Best Middle Grade Novel of the 21st Century and an E. B. White Read Aloud Honor Book. Sayantani is a pediatrician by training, but now teaches at Columbia University. She is a team member of We Need Diverse Books, and can be found online at sayantanidasgupta.com and on Twitter at @sayantani16.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, National Bestseller, Lambda Literary Award Finalist Melissa Febos talks about her critically-acclaimed, award-winning book, Girlhood

ABOUT MELISSA 

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart, the essay collection, Abandon Me, and a craft book, Body Work. She is the inaugural winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The BAU Institute, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and others. Her essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Granta, Sewanee Review, Tin House, The Sun, and The New York Times. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.

Praise for Girlhood
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * TIME * NPR * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys


“Febos’s own voice is so irreverent and original. The aim of this book, though, is not simply to tell about her own life, but to listen to the pulses of many others’. In her author’s note, Febos writes that she has ‘found company in the stories of other women, and the revelation of all our ordinariness has itself been curative.’ This solidarity puts Girlhood in a feminist canon that includes Febos’s idol, Adrienne Rich, and Maggie Nelson’s theory-minded masterpieces: smart, radical company, and not ordinary at all.” —New York Times Book Review


“Anyone who has ever been a girl or a woman will recognize the patterns Febos uncovers: the unwanted touch, the expectations of our bodies, the way we become complicit in the traps laid out for us along the way by the patriarchal structures that govern so many of our social, professional, and interpersonal spheres . . . By following Febos' distinct paths between the past and present, we might realize there's room to forge our own, and that we've just been handed a flashlight that helps illuminate the way.” —NPR, “Books We Love”


“Febos is an intoxicating writer, but I found myself most grateful for the vivid clarity of her thinking . . . disquisitive and catalytic--it doesn’t demand change so much as expose certain injustices so starkly that you might feel you cannot abide them another minute . . . I never once needed trigonometry and I couldn’t find Catullus in a crossword these days, but Febos’ education is a kind I surely could have used.” —The Atlantic


“Febos combines personal, cultural, investigative, and scholarly passages to ferociously dissect the lessons that shaped her, and the result is a book that fills the educational void she’d noticed . . . A guide for women to redefine themselves.” —Boston Globe


“These essays are moss and iron—hard and beautiful—and struck through with Febos’ signature brilliance and power and grace. An essential, heartbreaking project.”

—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dreamhouse



“Girlhood is an exquisite collection. In lapidary, lucid prose, Melissa Febos dissects the traumas, terrors, and pleasures of the fraught passage from girl to woman. . . This is a book for mothers, daughters, and our deepest selves, a true light in the dark.”
—Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter and Stray



“Girlhood is a must-read hybrid text for women looking to define themselves from the inside.”
—Melissa Broder, author of So Sad Today and The Pisces


Melissa Febos critically-acclaimed, Girlhood, examined the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.


When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet the expectations of others. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.

Written with Febos’ characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.

Monday 6/27 at 9:30am pst - Judy Wu, professor of Asian American studies, director of the Humanities Center, and historian talks about her book Fierce and Fearless Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

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Marking the 50th Anniversary of Title IX, Judy Wu, professor of Asian American studies, director of the Humanities Center, and historian who recently co-authored a comprehensive biography of Title IX pioneer, Patsy Mink, titled Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, professor of Asian American studies and director of UCI's Humanities Center, is a co-author on the first-ever biography on the powerhouse lawmaker and major author of Title IX, Patsy Takemoto Mink. Wu collaborated with Mink’s daughter, political scientist Gwendolyn “Wendy” Mink on the book, Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress.

“Lots of people associate Title IX with equality in collegiate sports, but it’s also about admissions, scholarships, housing and employment. It established the basic legal principle of gender equity and completely revolutionized education in America,” says Wu.

Fierce and Fearless
Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink

Discussion points:

How did the idea for this book come about?

Tell me about the process of collaborating with Wendy Mink.

How did Patty Mink, who surprisingly is not a well-known name in feminist US history, make her mark in Washington DC?

This is the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Can you talk about the creation of Title IX and it's legacy today.

In 1972, what happened when Title IX was enacted, because I know it took several years to create the structure to enforce it

Cara Capuano UCI's Communications Officer and accomplished TV & Radio Sports Broadcaster recently produced a UCI podcast featuring Judy Wu and Wendy Mink:

LISTEN: https://news.uci.edu/2022/06/22/uci-podcast-patsy-minks-role-in-title-ix-passage/

READ: Title IX’s legacy at 50 | UCI School of Humanities

Projects mentioned by Judy:

https://sites.uci.edu/voice/

https://sharingstories1977.uh.edu/

About Professor Judy Wu

Professor, Asian American Studies
Director of Humanities Center
Chancellor's Fellow
Ph.D., Stanford University, 1998, History
University of California, Irvine

See the new short documentary by Ben Proudfoot.

When the Backlash Came for Title IX, She Fought Back

Research Interests
Asian American History; Comparative Racialization and Immigration; Empire and Decolonization; Gender and Sexuality

MORE - UC Irvine - Faculty Profile System - Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Monday 9:00am LIVE on KUCI - Vicky Johnson, professor of film & media studies and African American studies and author of Sports TV joins host Janeane LIVE on KUCI 88.9fm

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Victoria E. Johnson, professor of film & media studies, is the author of Sports TV, which looks at the genre from a distinctly humanistic perspective, exploring American history, culture, class, race and identity through the lens of broadcast sports. One chapter in Sports TV specifically focuses on Title IX and its legacies, including the explosion of female participation and visibility in sports at all levels, as well as in the boom in marketing of the “female athlete icon” that has occurred from the 1990s onward, thanks to the growth of the first and second post-Title IX generation of female participants in sports.

According to Johnson, "Perhaps the most visible legacy of Title IX has been the explosion of female participation in sports at all levels since its institution. Title IX has encouraged subsequent generations of female-identified athletes and professionals to participate in and to re-imagine sports as athletes, coaches, and sports media professionals. Crucial here, also, have been the ways that marketing, advertising, and the explosion of social media have capitalized on and promoted the 'post-Title IX' female athlete as icon and target demographic."

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book offers an introductory guide to sports TV, its history in the United States, the genre’s defining characteristics, and analysis of its critical significance for the business practices, formal properties, and social, cultural, and political meanings of the medium.

Victoria E. Johnson discusses a range of examples, from textual analysis of programs such as Monday Night Football and Being Serena to examination of television rights details, to sports TV’s technological innovations and engagement of critical political debates. Johnson examines sports TV from its introduction to the ESPN+ era. She proposes that sports, as seen on TV in all of its iterations, is the central cultural forum for working through questions of community ideals, struggles over national and regional mythologies, and questions of representative citizenship.

This book is an ideal guide for students and scholars of television, media, and cultural studies as well as those with an interest in television genre, sports TV history, and contemporary sport and media culture.

Coming up Monday June 20th 2022 @ 9:15am pst - Father and son simultaneously battle cancer in comedian’s darkly funny and deeply moving memoir - Cotton Teeth. Four-time cancer survivor Glenn Rockowitz pens follow-up to bestseller, “Rodeo in Joliet”

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Seattle, Washington – Four-time cancer survivor, comedian and former SNL writer, Glenn Rockowitz, is back with his highly anticipated second memoir, “Cotton Teeth” (Harper & Case, December 14, 2021).

Diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1998, Rockowitz recalls being told he had only three months to live. He was 28 years old at the time, and starting a family. His wife was eight months pregnant. Rockowitz’ psychoanalyst father, after praying that they could switch places, received his own surprising terminal diagnosis only a week later. In the weeks that followed, the two would battle cancer side-by-side.

With writing that is visceral, raw and poetic, Rockowitz dives headfirst into old memories, and tragedy gives way to a darkly funny and intensely loving experience.

Named one of Kirkus’ Best Books of 2021, this is Rockowitz's unflinchingly candid account of the heartbreak, joy, and wisdom shared between father and son as they face their final months of life alone, and together. “Cotton Teeth” is the long-awaited follow-up to Rockowitz's bestselling memoir, “Rodeo in Joliet,” published in 2009.


“Cotton Teeth”

Glenn Rockowitz | December 14, 2021 | Harper & Case | Memoir

More about Glenn Rockowitz


Glenn Rockowitz is an American writer, filmmaker and comedian. A graduate of Chicago's famed Second City, Rockowitz went on to write and perform comedy for many years throughout the U.S. In 1995, he founded a nonprofit AIDS and cancer charity known as The Best Medicine Group–an organization that brought hundreds of live comedy shows into the homes of terminally-ill patients throughout the metropolitan New York area.

“Rodeo in Joliet,” a memoir of Rockowitz’s battle with a very aggressive late-stage cancer, was released nationally on April 11, 2009. By early 2010, the book became a national bestseller and was subsequently optioned by director Matt Aselton to become a major motion picture, written by Ryan Knighton for release in 2023. His latest memoir “Cotton Teeth” was awarded a 2021 Foreword INDIES award and a 2022 IndieReader Discovery Award, and was selected as one of Kirkus’ Best Books of 2021. Rockowitz has appeared on the Moth, NPR, NBC, CBS and a variety of radio programs.


Follow Glenn Rockowitz on social media:

Facebook | Twitter


In an interview, Glenn Rockowitz discusses:

• His background in stand-up comedy and improv, and why it was important to infuse humor into his memoir
  
  
• How being told that he only had months to live affected his everyday life
  
  
• The suppressed childhood memories that resurfaced while he battled cancer and how he reckoned with them
  
  
• How his relationship with his father changed during their joint battle with cancer
  
  
• The impact his father’s death had on him as a son, but also as a father himself

Coming up Monday June 20th 2022 @ 9:00am pst - Wade Rouse, internationally bestselling author of 13 books, is back with his first memoir in a decade. MAGIC SEASON: A Son’s Story

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to the show

Wade Rouse, internationally bestselling author of 13 books, is back with his first memoir in a decade. MAGIC SEASON: A Son’s Story (Hanover Square Press; May 3, 2022; hardcover)

In the 1970’s Ozarks, sports, hunting, and fishing defined a boy’s world. But they didn’t define author Wade Rouse’s world, which was instead filled with reading, writing, and cooking. This was a problem for Rouse’s father Ted, a by-the-book engineer who was incapable of the emotional support his gay son so desperately needed. The only thing the two had in common was a love for the St. Louis Cardinals.

When Ted’s health is in decline, Rouse returns home to Southwest Missouri to watch one last season of baseball with his father. Emotions run high on the field as the Cardinals race for the pennant; and on the couch, where Rouse races to make peace before his dad passes on. As Rouse recounts the past and confronts the present, readers may find themselves rooting for reconciliation on one page, then hoping for a final and permanent split on the next.

While sports fans will enjoy the baseball tie-in, this book is also for anyone with a parent, child, relative, or old friend who they continue to love despite the person being very hard to love. Since a perfect parent/child relationship is about as likely as a perfectly pitched game (.01%), Rouse’s story, and the highly-charged themes within it, will strike a chord with nearly every reader.

About Wade Rouse

Wade Rouse is the USA TODAY and internationally bestselling author of 13 books, including four memoirs and nine novels. 

Wade’s books have been translated into 21 languages and have been bestsellers across the world. He chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, as a pen name to honor the working poor Ozarks woman whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his fiction. His latest Viola Shipman novel, The Secret of Snow, was an instant national and indie bestseller.

Wade will publish three new books in 2022, including Magic Season and two new Viola Shipman novels, The Edge of Summer (July) and a winter/holiday novel, both with Graydon House Books.

A noted humorist of four memoirs, Wade was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (he lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (Wade was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).

Wade’s previous Viola Shipman novels include The Summer Cottage (a USA TODAY bestseller); The Clover Girls (a #1 Great Lakes & Midwest Indie Bestseller); The Charm Bracelet (a 2017 Michigan Notable Book of the Year); The Hope Chest; The Recipe Box; and The Heirloom Garden.

Wade’s books have been selected multiple times as Must-Reads by NBC’s Today Show, featured in the Washington Post, USA Today and on Chelsea Lately and chosen three times as Indie Next Picks by the nation’s independent booksellers.

His writing has appeared in a wide range of publications and media, including Coastal Living, Time, All Things Considered, People, Good Housekeeping, Salon, Forbes, Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly.

Wade earned his B.A. from Drury University and his master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. He divides his time between Saugatuck, Michigan, and Palm Springs, California, and is also an acclaimed writing teacher who has mentored numerous students to become published authors.

Wade hosts the popular Facebook Live literary happy hour, “Wine & Words with Wade,” every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. EST on the Viola Shipman author page where he talks writing, inspiration and welcomes bestselling authors and publishing insiders.

For more, please visit violashipman.com or www.waderouse.com

What is the Significance of Juneteenth? Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day & Freedom Day has it's one year anniversary as a federal holiday that began in 2021.

Photo credit: Project Forever Free.org

WATCH: What is Juneteenth? History, Meaning and Why We Celebrate the Holiday (today.com)


From Erin M. Smith, Congressional Research Service

"Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. It is also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Juneteenth Independence Day, and Black Independence Day. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, TX, and announced the end of the civil war and the end of slavery. Although the Emancipation Proclamation came 2½ years earlier on January 1, 1863, many enslavers continued to hold enslaved Black people captive after the announcement, and Juneteenth became a symbolic date representing African-American freedom. Juneteenth became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021. All 50 states and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as a holiday or observance, and at least 18 states have enacted laws to observe the holiday as a paid state holiday."

MORE: Want to Learn Black History and Heritage for Juneteenth? Reconstruction US Has You Covered. (projectforeverfree.org)