What a month to start 2025 with.. We are extending so much hope and virtual hugs your way.

We want to share some glimmers and gratitude:

  • 1,146 people have joined us on StoryGraph

  • 408 people have subscribed to our newsletter

  • 181 people have joined our Discord channel

We are so thrilled about the excitement to read and uplift racialized authors in 2025 :)

A few reminders

What is the February prompt?

There is no *set* February 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 92 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?

  1. Storygraph challenge

  2. Carrd under “List of Prompts”

Book Clubs & Readalongs

Brittany is hosting a Fable & Storygraph book clubs for the following books:

  1. Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant… and Completely Over It by Lester Fabian Braithwaite

    1. This book can potentially fulfill the following prompts:Content warnings from Storygraph:

      1. Black Diaspora author

      2. South American author (author was born in Guyana)

      3. A book with less than 200 reviews on Goodreads/Storygraph by a racialized author

      4. Collection of Essays by a racialized author

      5. Satire/Comedy by a racialized author

      6. Memoir by a racialized author

      7. Queer racialized author

      8. Gay racialized author

      9. Nonfiction about intersectional feminism by a racialized author

      10. Graphic: Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism

      11. Moderate: Death of parent

  2. The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang

    1. This book can potentially fit the following prompts:Content Warnings from Storygraph:

      1. Surrealism/magical realism by a racialized author

      2. Asian Diaspora author

      3. Book originally written in a non-European language

      4. Translated work by a racialized author

      5. East Asian author

      6. A book about time travel or parallel universes (if I am understanding the premise correctly… I could be wrong! I will keep you posted regardless😊)

      7. Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement

      8. Moderate: Bullying, Violence, Body horror

      9. Minor: Death of parent, Addiction

  3. A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen

    1. This book can potentially fit the following prompts:

      1. Fantasy/Science Fiction by a racialized author

      2. East Asian author

      3. A book about Time Travel and/or Parallel Universes by a racialized author

      4. Asian Diaspora author

      5. Genre Fiction by a racialized author

Content warnings from Storygraph:

  • Graphic: Grief, Animal death, Death

  • Moderate: Cursing, Alcohol

  • Minor: Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Dementia

Any of the above books could also potentially fill the following prompts, depending on what you’ve read, what is on your TBR, etc:

  • A book recommended to you by a friend

  • A book on your TBR

  • A new-to-you author

StoryGraph Updates

I wanted to provide prompts that were not so granular when it comes to disability and sexuality (similar to the “diaspora” prompts, in leaving room/space for those identities), so I added these three to the Storygraph challenge:

  • sapphic representation

  • achillean representation

  • chronic illness or pain representation

  • disability representation

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 try to “hide” the option within 48-72 hours of your email/text.

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!

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).

Brittany’s Libro FM playlist | Margherita’s Libro FM playlist

Brittany’s Bookshop.org list | Margherita’s Bookshop.org list

About the creators

Brittany is a reader and educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be found here. She also hosts the SF Bay Area chapter of Cassie’s Walking Club on Strava. 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.

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