Maya Smart

  • About
  • Books & Authors
  • Parent Resources
    • Book Lists
    • Literacy Activities
    • Book Crafts
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Events
  • Contact

4 Memorable Quotes from Award-Winning Authors at the Texas Book Festival

December 14, 2020

Texas Book Festival Authors

By Maya Payne Smart Austin may be known for live music and technology show stoppers ACL and SXSW, but the quieter, gentler TBF stole my heart when I landed in Texas. Within weeks of moving to town, I signed up to volunteer with the Texas Book Festival’s Reading Rock Stars program, which brings authors to Title I schools and gives each child a book, sometimes the very first they’ve ever owned. And within a few months I joined the festival’s board and served for four years. This year the . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Literary Events

Jacqueline Woodson on what teachers can do for kids’ reading

December 16, 2019

Author Jacqueline Woodson

I marvel at book talk attendees. People trek from great distances, clutching worn copies of favorite reads. They stand in long lines for a brief word with (or autograph from) a favorite writer. The brave ones step to the podium to share stories or ask questions. Their remarks bring more voices and perspectives into conversation. Their contributions add welcome depth and texture to the occasion. At a Jacqueline Woodson BookPeople talk that I moderated in October, an educator in the audience . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews, Parenthood

Jacqueline Woodson on Red at the Bone

December 11, 2019

Book Review: Red At The Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

When people ask what my favorite book is, I always respond with Jacqueline Woodson’s 2012 picture book Each Kindness. But truth be told, everything she writes, from picture book to poetry to novel, is wonderful. Each new work prompts me to consider central questions of who we are, why we are, and how we can grow for the better. And, because I adore her writing and her advocacy for reading, I interview her every chance I get. Here’s an excerpt from our October conversation about her novel Red . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Kiese Laymon Discusses Heavy

December 13, 2018

Book Review: Heavy by Kiese Laymo

Emphatic and unsparing, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy explores the weight of wellness in a culture obsessed with lean. His expansive intelligence and fluid prose bear up to haunting family secrets and American deceptions with deep, potent wells of beauty, humor, and empathy. Initially conceived as a weight-loss story chronicling his family’s struggles with food and violence, the writing of Heavy, which was recently named a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, got murkier . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors

Nafissa Thompson-Spires Discusses Heads of the Colored People

April 11, 2018

Book Review: Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Dark and absorbing, Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ debut story collection, Heads of the Colored People, explores the unstable moorings of black identity and citizenship in blistering stories peopled with indelible characters. The title derives from a series of 19th-century literary sketches of free black laborers penned by Dr. James McCune Smith. That Smith, a black abolitionist, intellectual, and elite, chose washerwomen and gravediggers for literary representation and pondered them as “heads” . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Tayari Jones Discusses An American Marriage

February 6, 2018

Book Review: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones is unequivocal in her belief that mass incarceration, with its attendant state violence, is the “most pressing civil rights issue of our day.” Yet her latest novel, An American Marriage, makes an unjust incarceration the backdrop for a nuanced interrogation of another issue of social freedom and equality: a wife’s right to pursue her own desires and fulfill her aspirations independently of her husband. Celestial is an artist on the cusp of critical and commercial success at . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Jesmyn Ward Discusses Sing, Unburied, Sing

September 5, 2017

Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward has stared down truth and rendered it on the page with poignance and precision before. But for her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward forged a fresh set of writing tools—historical research, multiple first-person points of view, and a touch of the supernatural—to grapple with the legacy wounds of American racism. Urgent and evocative, Sing, Unburied, Sing explores the inescapable force of history bearing down on thepresent. Dense, . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton Discusses A Kind of Freedom

August 15, 2017

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s grandfather graduated from college and six of his children followed suit. But the next generation struggled to keep pace even as the specter of Jim Crow receded. “I wanted to know why,” she says, and chose fiction as her probe. The Dartmouth and UC Berkeley Law graduate’s research revealed the war on drugs and mass incarceration as modern barriers to opportunity. Her challenge became illuminating the culprits in narrative form. That is, writing a page-turner, not a . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Stephanie Powell Watts Discusses No One Is Coming to Save Us

April 4, 2017

Book Review: No One Is Coming To Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts

Ominous and timely, No One Is Coming to Save Us explores the sense of displacement and dispossession that burrows within communities—and individuals—when work vanishes. The novel follows residents of Pinewood, a declining North Carolina factory town, as they ponder the twin perils of staying stuck in the stubborn red clay beneath them or moving earth to cut their own new roads. Author Stephanie Powell Watts’ story could take place in countless small towns around the country—she points out that . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Angie Thomas Discusses The Hate U Give

February 27, 2017

Book Review: The Hate You Give By Angie Thomas

It’s tempting to think of Angie Thomas’ YA novel The Hate U Give as being ripped straight from the latest headlines about an unarmed black person shot by the police. But that would miss the point that for many people, Thomas included, the news is not only news: it is lived experience—raw and achingly intimate. And the lives stolen are individual, particular to specific families, neighborhoods, and communities, not generic fodder for hashtags and sound bites. Thomas says she sometimes has to . . .

Read the Post

Leave a Comment · Author Interview, Books & Authors, Books Reviews

Older Posts

Hey There, I’m Maya!

Maya Smart

I’m Maya Payne Smart, a journalist, book lover, and literacy advocate. I split my time between deep reading and slow writing, often about dynamic women who lift as they climb. My focus? Promoting a #litrich lifestyle for families and individuals. I aim to show parents what it takes to raise fluent readers and to connect people of all ages to great books and authors. I also share productivity tips, interviews, and more, when inspiration strikes.

About   |   Why I Blog   |   Austin Woman Cover Story

Popular Posts

  • A Farewell to Remember
  • Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection
  • Are You Hitting Enough Home Runs in Your Life?
  • Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (Revised and Updated)
  • When Books Are the Best Medicine: Fostering Literacy in the ER

Copyright © 2021 · Maya Smart. All Rights Reserved. · Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions · Comment Policy.