The Diverse Baseline: July 2025 Newsletter

We want to start by sharing some glimmers and gratitude:

Thank yall for being part of our #TheDiverseBaseline community!

Check out my favorite reads of the year so far ^^^

Books that can be part of #TheDiverseBaseline challenge:

-Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker-The Serviceberry by Robin Lee Kimmerer-Unassimilable by Bianca Mabute-Louie-The Leavers by Lisa Ko-Seen Yet Unseen by Bäri A. Williams-Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan-Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping by Jesse Q. Sutanto-Oathbound by Tracy Deonn-The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

There is no *set* July 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.

We included a definition of this:

Brittany is hosting a StoryGraph readalong & virtual book club for the following book during July in celebration of Summerween: I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham-Jones

This book could fit the following prompts (as far as I can gather from the synopsis, as I haven’t read it yet):

To purchase using Brittany’s affiliate links, you can do so here:

Brittany is hosting her second synchronous virtual book club THIS SUNDAY, JULY 6TH AT 12PM Pacific Time.

We are sharing a few reviews each month and we thank you for sharing your reviews on socials.

Remember to use #TheDiverseBaseline2025 #TheDiverseBaseline 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 social media pages :)

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!

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

Brittany is a reader 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.

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.