Leah Rachel von Essen reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot. Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She writes passionately about books in translation, chronic illness and bias in healthcare, queer books, twisty SFF, and magical realism and folklore. She was one of a select few bookstagrammers named to NewCity’s Chicago Lit50 in 2022. She is an avid traveler, a passionate fan of women’s basketball and soccer, and a lifelong learner. Twitter: @reading_while
The pandemic has made an difficult process even harder. As new challenges arise, organizations are fighting for prisoners’ access to books.
If you love rereading books, and are looking for some perfect candidates, check out these complex, twisty books to reread.
One reader asks why we demand so much of our fiction when our lives themselves so often go beyond the suspension of disbelief.
Explore the myriad powerful stories through visual storytelling and these graphic memoirs and true stories by women, including The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui.
These eight brilliant novels of historical fiction featuring intergenerational family sagas tell sweeping and epic tales, including Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina A. Kover.
Donating for the holidays or for the CARES Act tax deduction? These literacy charities are doing great work locally and on larger scales.
The 2020 World Fantasy Award winners have been announced!
These authors cover intersectional issues, present solutions, and share their experiences of sexism in healthcare, research, and the ER in books like Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens.
If you thought the landscape of classic SFF was exclusively male, peep these science fiction and fantasy stories by women, including Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown.
Real readers weigh in on how the stress and new routines of the pandemic have changed how much we’re reading—and what we’re choosing to read.