– HBW collected tributes from a number of important writers and scholars to bid farewell to Chancellor Bob Hemenway, who – among many other accomplishments – wrote a foundational literary biography of Zora Neale Hurston.

– ForHarriet shared 7 Black Women Science Fiction Writers Everyone Should Know. (One of the authors, Nalo Hopkinson, has a new short story collection out right now.)

– Roxane Gay opens this conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates by noting the frequent comparisons of Coates to James Baldwin. 5 days earlier, Vinson Cunningham wrote about why Coates isn’t the James Baldwin of our time.

– Baldwin or not, Coates did make it onto President Obama’s summer reading list.

– Beverly Jenkins spoke to NPR Books about writing historical romances with black protagonists.

– Issa Rae, author of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, was profiled in the New York Times in “The Misadventures of Issa Rae.”

– Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins series, sat down with NPR for conversations about the Watts Riots and his Southern roots.