We hope you had a gentle start to the new year. Thank you to the 986 people who have joined us on StoryGraph, the ~365 substack subscribers here, and the ~155 people who have joined our TDB Discord channel. We are so grateful and excited to be on this reading journey with yall :)
A few reminders as we head into our first month of The Diverse Baseline
What is the January prompt?
There is no *set* January prompt this year. This challenge is fully up to you :) You can choose whichever book you want for each month, as long as it fits one of the 90 prompts we’ve listed and is written by a racialized author.
What does “racialized” mean?
We included a definition of this:
Where are the prompts listed?
Storygraph challenge
Book Clubs & Readalongs
More information on Margherita’s January book club pick “Make Room for Love” by Darcy Liao can be found here.
Brittany is hosting a readalong for “Black Friend: Essays” by Ziwe here until January 31st. Here is a comment to entice you to join us and share your thoughts too!
StoryGraph Updates
We have updated all of the prompts on StoryGraph to be followed by “by a racialized author,” to be as clear as possible for those who may have missed the guidelines at the top, in our SubStack, on Instagram, or on the carrd.
This was written in the description for each of the prompts, but it seems like folks are already adding white authors to the prompts.
The prompt titles now look like the below:
If you catch a mistake under a prompt, email us at [email protected] or send a text in the dedicated channel on our discord server which is named #oops to let us know & we will “hide” the option within 48-72 hours of your email/text.
We recognize that this can feel incredibly frustrating for you, as many of you look through the prompts to find recommendations, and we hold space for those feelings. We are offering some gentle advice as you navigate this, because we guarantee that folks will continue adding authors and/or books to prompts that do not fit the brief… all. year. long. (even re-adding ones we’ve hidden before)
Our advice is to:
not choose that author for the prompt (since you know it doesn’t fit the brief)
add your own choice (granted that it fits the brief)
email us (or if you’re in the Discord, let us know in the #oops channel), and we will “hide” the option for anyone to choose it in the future
keep it moving and try your best to focus on your challenge. We say this with genuine love and care; we don’t want an optional reading challenge and how others are doing it to ruin your experience of it.
Despite our best efforts, some people will add white authors to the challenge all year long, as well as racialized authors in identity prompts that don’t fit them. While that’s not our aim and it’s clearly stated in our guidelines to choose racialized authors and to carefully research the writers and books you’re interested in, you can rest assured in knowing your choice is a racialized author or one that properly fits the prompt.
We are assuming good faith in everyone who is participating, and recognize that mistakes will be made. We unfortunately can’t fully “unshelve” these options for anyone who chose the books, and we can’t control others.. but that’s okay! There’s no punitive actions for anyone who isn’t following the challenge correctly. That’s ultimately a them problem, and something we do not have the capacity nor desire to vigilantly police.
This challenge is optional, meant to be fun and introspective, and when people make mistakes, it is what it is! Regardless, we will try our best to hide the options that don’t fit the prompt in a timely manner.
Review Spotlight
We are sharing a few reviews each month and we thank you for sharing your reviews on socials.
Remember to use #TheDiverseBaseline2025 when posting your reviews, and/or tagging us (only if you want to/feel comfortable doing so), so we can find & spotlight them here.
If you click the below photos, they are hyperlinked to take you to their Instagram pages :)
Templates and Stickers
In the carrd, you will find links to Canva templates for your Instagram feed and Instagram stories, as well as some fun stickers you can use in your posts.
If you have any templates that you have made and would like us to spread the word about, please email us with links to your templates and we will share in the Discord and the next newsletter!
Call-Ins
While we are hosting this challenge with passion and thoughtfulness, we recognize that we are ultimately two fallible humans who can and will miss the mark. With that being said, we both are open to being called in and having 1:1 dialogues with yall. We care deeply about this challenge and want to do it with immense love and care.
If you have any comments, concerns, or feedback regarding the challenge, we encourage you to reach out to us.
Ways to reach out to us:
Email us at [email protected]
DM Brittany, Margherita, or our lovely moderator Mylynn @hyperfixatedreader in the Discord server
DM us on Instagram
We are asking the following as a shared community agreement, though this challenge will be shared across StoryGraph, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, and GoodReads, and is not just one centralized “community.”
If you are in the Discord server, we ask that you don’t share or screenshot the Discord conversations, to respect those in the server. You can absolutely share general lessons or reflections, but we ask that you not repeat what others disclose (sometimes very vulnerably) in the Discord. We obviously cannot and will not police this, but are hoping you honor this.
Co-host’s Recommendations
We now both have official recommendation lists, as well as general lists of books we’ve read for the challenge, on libro.fm and bookshop.org. If you would like highly recommended books from us, check out our links and support local/indie bookstores in the process (if it’s an accessible option for you).
About the creators
Brittany is a reader and educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be found here. If you’d like to tip her for her emotional labor, you can do so here.
Margherita is a reader and indie author from Italy. Xe can be found on instagram, tiktok and substack. Xyr website with links to xyr books, author services, and more is linked here.