Roz Chast to Design National Poetry Month Poster

National Book Award finalist and award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast will design the official poster for National Poetry Month, April 2015. Chast, who also created the art for the 2015 Independent Bookstore Day bag [5], was selected to design the poster by graphic designer Chip Kidd on behalf of the Academy of American Poets. More than 100,000 copies of the poster will be distributed free of charge to schools, libraries, and bookstores nationwide for their April celebrations.

“Roz Chast is the perfect choice to create the National Poetry Month poster,” said Kidd. “I think she is the Sylvia Plath of comics, only funnier, and from Ocean Parkway.”

National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world with millions of people celebrating poetry in their communities each April. The Academy of American Poets provides special lesson plans for teachers during the month, promotes local events, and distributes the official National Poetry Month poster through partnerships with the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English. The poster will also be available upon request on the organization’s website, Poets.org [6].

SIBA Celebrates One Book, One South in November

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is launching the One Book, One South [7] book discussion club this month, with Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy (Atria Books) as its inaugural pick. The program encourages participants to purchase the book from an independent bookstore.

Throughout the month of November, Southern independent bookstores and ReaderMeetWriter.com [8] will coordinate conversations among readers participating in One Book, One South. Conversations will culminate on November 20 at 8:00 p.m. with a live Q&A with Tademy on Facebook [9].