National Poetry Month + May Bookish Updates!

Hello my fellow bookworms!

I hope you are all doing well. This past month was (technically still is) National Poetry Month and this upcoming month is Asian/Pacific Islander American Heritage Month! 

To celebrate poetry this month, I took part in a book circle for Joan Naviyuk Kane's most recent book of poetry, Dark Traffic. Ms. Kane is an American Inupiaq poet and novelist, whose work explores the experiences, perspectives, and identities of American Indigenous peoples. Having not been part of a book circle for a long while, I thought it was a fun, virtual experience. If you would like to have some insight on her poems, there is a video on YouTube from Poets House, which has Ms. Kane reading her poems from her various published works.

Here is some book related news and links for you to enjoy:

• If you are looking for books to read for May, try these links: PBS' list of children's books, Epic Reads' Young Adult List, and Penguin Random House's (Adult Book) List for books to celebrate Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

• World Press Freedom Day is coming up this May 3rd! UNESCO is the leading UN agency for education and is hosting a "Journalism under Digital Siege" conference in honor of World Press Freedom Day, that you can join online (click here for more information). As UNESCO states, May 3rd "acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in pursuit of a story" (UNESCO, 2022).
  

• A little late in passing on the information, but if you are currently working on either a horror/thriller or crime/mystery novel and have the first chapter already written, you can submit it for possible publication and a cash prize from Uncharted! See more details here.

• More and more institutions are banning books deemed unfit for our youth today. Institutions such as the New York Public Library (NYPL) is making it an initiative to provide copies of the banned books to all who request them - free of wait times and fines! The NYPL stands by the right to read freely, and you can too, by reading into their initiative here. 

• If you live in the Toronto area, Happily Ever After Books, a bookstore for romantics, will be popping up over the Toronto region throughout the year! If you visit, let me know how it is. Otherwise, you can visit them online, too!

•  If you are into Bram Stoker's Dracula, you can meet up with other enthusiasts at the Whitby Abbey in Whitby, England on May 25, 2022. According to CNN, everyone joining will attempt to beat the record to have the largest gathering of people dressed as vampires. Why this date? It celebrates the 125 anniversary of Dracula, of course!
  

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

I have some book-related plans coming up for the summer, but I will post about it after more details are finalized. What are your plans for this spring/summer? Are there any new books you are looking forward to or are on your To Be Read list? Let me know in the comments! :)

Happy Reading!