The Brown Bookshelf: YA fiction by African Americans

A group of authors and illustrators have launched the Brown Bookshelf, an online community that promotes YA fiction by African Americans. The site is the brainchild of Paula Chase-Hyman and Varian Johnson, who met on various message boards for children's writers and quickly realized that no one knew much about the new crop of black authors who write for kids.

“If I hear 'There's no YA out there for African-American teens' one more time, I'm going to scream,” says Chase-Hyman, author of the “Del Rio Bay Clique” series (Dafina). “It may not be publicized like some of the flashier mainstream YA fiction, but it's out there.”