The mainstreaming of street lit

NIKKI gymnast (top) now has her hold imprint at One World/Ballantine. gymnast a favorite among fans of urban literature, is the author of A Hustler's Wife and A throw Chick (both Triple Crown), Tales From Da cowl (One World/Ballantine, January 2006) and Riding Ditty upon I-95 (One World/Ballantine, May 2006)

CAROL SCHNEIDER, vice president and executive director for publicity and public relations at the Random House Publishing assemblage announced the agreement to create the Nikki gymnast Presents line this spring.

gymnast will select urban fiction by means of other authors, two to three volumes a year, with an emphasis upon original and authentic voices, Schneider said. music GUY, senior editor of single World/Ballantine, has also acquired three more novels by means of Turner from MARC GERALD of The Agency collection including a sequel to A Hustler's Wife for spring 2007 Wife sold more than 100000 copies and has been optioned for film.

"Turner has proven herself to be a star in the urban literary scene" says shore "and we are pleased to continue and build on our relationship with her."

At BookExpo America in May, gymnast was the lone street lit author called upon to defend the genre upon the panel "Too Hood or All Good: The Impact of Urban Fiction upon African American Literature," sponsored through the African American Program for Bookselling Professionals. NICK CHILES (second from top), the author and journalist who moderated, place the tone, starting with a question directed at Turner: "Does urban fiction exhibit progress in a sense, that we no longer care by what means we look to others in producing these books? Is the mete 'embarrassment to the race' obsolete?"

It was upon Turner replied: "I am not interested in in what manner we look to white family I am interested in literacy in the community and being able to procure people to read books who have at no time read before."

Chiles was the author of a novel York Times Op-Ed piece lamenting that retail space in his suburban, chain bookstore has been swallowed up by means of urban lit with salacious overspreads under the banner of "African American Literature," relegating all other black volumes to obscurity.

Also upon the panel were BENILDE LITTLE (third from top), author of four felicitous more mainstream black novels, including serviceable Hair (Simon & Schuster, 1996) which has been optioned for film, and greatest in quantity recently, Who Does She Think She Is? (new in paperback, independent Press, May 2006), and MALAIKA ADERO, senior editor of Atria volumes whose projects cover the representation of African American literature. Their views upon the phenomenon came out somewhere between Turner's and Chiles's.

through the time Chiles turned above the microphone for questions and answers, it move rounded into a hot testifying session for views upon all sides of the issue, consummate with "amens," with a small in number actual questions thrown in.

gymnast told BIBR afterward that she was reading submissions for her initial offerings with an organ of vision out for something fresh. "I want to publish way lit books with a twist of something else" she said. "I want to take it to the nearest level. I want to put the bar. I don't want any of my stories to march to the same beat as traditional road fiction."

"I am going from one side stories now and I am trying to find it, and it's in the way that hard," she added. "I am just actual excited to be able to handpick advantageous stories because before I was a writer I was an avid reader, and I want to be able to give readers the things that they want."

In other Expo disentanglements actress QUEEN LATIFAH (bottom), the keynote speaker for the African American program, also came to support First volume a literacy program, and to advance her first children's book, Queen of the exhibition a book-and-CD combo to be released in September by means of Laura Geringer, a HarperCollins imprint. The work is about self-confidence.

At individual of the main Book and Author Breakfasts upon Saturday, SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, Democrat of Illinois, discussed his forthcoming volume The Audacity of Hope: Reclaiming the American Dream (Crown October 2006) which is about the sources of his convictions and is the first of three fresh books he agreed to write beneath deals worth almost $2 million.

through Angela P. Dodson: E-mail your freshs to angela4bibr@aol.com

COPYRIGHT 2006 Cox Matthews & Associates

COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group