Dashka Slater

Accountable YALSA AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION WINNERCalifornia Book Award WinnerJ. Anthony Lukas Book Prize WinnerFrom the New York Times-bestselling author of Th...

Just dropping by to say that ACCOUNTABLE, a nonfiction page-turner about a racist social media account at a public high school, is currently downpriced as an ebook for $2.99.
bit.ly/3GsVtoe

Was Epstein murdered? In a way. And so were 695 other people held in American jails and prisons who died by suicide that same year due to some combination of indifference and incompetence.

Content Warning: This article discusses death by suicide

dashkaslater.substack.com/p/epsteins-d...

Alone With Your Thoughts How Loneliness, Fascism, and Disinformation Work In Concert

What's the difference between loneliness and solitude, and why is one so dangerous to democracy and the other so crucial? I explore the distinction in this week's Sigh of Relief.

dashkaslater.substack.com/p/alone-with...

Dashka Slater and the Fan Brothers: All The Wonders, Episode 419 Dashka Slater and The Fan Brothers, author and illustrators respectively of The Antlered Ship, stop by the podcast to talk about the spirit of asking questions, a thread of melancholy, and how sometim...

Listen Back: @dashkaslater.bsky.social and The Fan Brothers, author and illustrators of The Antlered Ship, talk about the spirit of asking questions, a thread of melancholy, and how sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.. www.allthewonders.com/podcasts/das... #kidlit #podcast

Talk to Strangers A question at a cafe leads to an unexpected heart-to-heart.

I wrote about the joys of having conversations with strangers and why having them is a blow against tyranny, extractive capitalism, automation, and isolation.

dashkaslater.substack.com/p/talk-to-st...

June Links and Thinks Ideas for your brain and balm for your soul

Each month, I share a list of interesting articles & podcasts. This month: community & resistance — how can we come together in this dark time? How do we create a vision of the future worth fighting for? No doomscrolling here, but lots of food for thought.

dashkaslater.substack.com/p/june-links...

i just finished reading Accountable by
@dashkaslater.bsky.social

i sobbed the entire way through. this book was the reminder i needed that no matter how scary the world gets, Justice and Revenge are not the same thing.

healing cannot happen by continuing cycles of violence and punishment.

We need *mass* mobilization in the U.S. right now, and I think that people who are somehow still focused on sneering at Perfidious Wine Mom Liberals are profoundly unserious

The Military's K-12 Schools Are Banning Award-Winning Kids’ Books To Appease Trump HuffPost obtained an internal list of books “quarantined” in Defense Department-run schools because they talk about transgender people and Black history.

That feeling when your book is on a list with a lot of beautiful and important books 🙌 . . . and then you realize what kind of list it is 🤬.

Thanks @huffpost.com for keeping the spotlight on the Trump administration’s attack on the freedom to read.

www.huffpost.com/entry/defens...

It was an amazing night!

Trump would like us to narrow our sphere of concern to those "deserving" of due process rights. We can push back by widening our scope of interest to encompass even those whose behavior is repellent to us. Read why in today's newsletter.

dashkaslater.substack.com/p/not-just-t...

Amazing line up of authors and terrific explanation of where we are right now with book bans.

Graphic in red that says THE BEST 100 YOUNG ADULT BOOKS OF THE CENTURY (SO FAR)

Absolutely thrilled to find THE 57 BUS on this list alongside so many books I adore and admire.

www.kirkusreviews.com/young-adult/...

At this point, no level of paranoia is actually paranoid

First they came for people who weren’t citizens.

This was a fascinating read. I remember talking with a very smart 12 year old who was “Team Gale.”I tried pointing out that Gale was a war criminal who basically killed Katniss’s sister, and she was like “but he’s way hotter.”

🙌📚🙌📚

Just stopped by to enjoy you getting ratioed. Spilling national security secrets isn’t in fact relatable you absolute morons. Please delete this article before you make the national dialogue even stupider than it already is

Girl, I am writing short stories for adults these days and whew! The rejections are coming fast & furious. Also, kidlit cred counts for nuthin in “literary” spaces because reasons.

Velshi Banned Book Club: ‘The 57 Bus’ by Dashka Slater In 2013, something terrible happened on the 57 bus in Oakland, California. Then-18-year-old Sasha Fleischman fell asleep riding the bus home from school holding their Russian literature reading assign...

If you missed it live, here’s a link to the interview!

It was an honor and a pleasure to be on Ali Velshi’s show and have him highlight the part of my work I am most proud of: the shades of gray.

The curse of knowledge means that it’s hard to remember when a debunked argument was persuasive to you. But it helps people be receptive to new info if you acknowledge that their (false) conclusion might have the appearance of logical truth. “I get why you would think that!”

I’m going to be talking about The 57 Bus with Ali Velshi on MSNBC this morning!

Counterproductive why? I’m not a student btw, I’m a journalist.

Question: is this a place where students can exert some pressure via a divestment campaign similar to the anti apartheid campus campaigns of the 80s? Are these endowment investments?

I spoke to graphic novelist Maria van Lieshout about her beautiful new graphic novel, Song of a Blackbird, which tells the story of the Dutch resistance to Nazi occupation. That history rhymes with our present and offers some useful lessons.

dashkaslater.substack.com/p/what-we-ca...

I feel like I need to schedule my rage so I can give each outrage its proper attention. One hour for Meta, one for DOE, one for each person kidnapped & sent to a supermax in El Salvador without due process, one for IMLS, one for USPI, one for Social Security…how many hours are there in a day again?

Meta stole 7 of my books and used them to train its crappy AI. I don’t want them to pay me for something I would never have sold them, for any amount of money. I want them to erase the whole thing and start again, from scratch, without using any stolen IP. That’s the remedy I seek.

Have you called your reps yet?