Diversity has always been at the forefront of discussions about publishing and content creation. In the book community, we strive to read more diversly and continue to grow and learn. This is why Marsha and Mary created Diversify Your Shelves. Their account is filled with diverse recommendations, with books you might have heard of, and also ones that aren’t as popular online. With their account, blog and book club, they help people read more diversly. They were kind enough to agree to an interview.
Can you introduce yourself and the aim of your account?
We’re Masha (@onceandfuturebooknerd) and Mary (@bookstorevibe), two bookstagrammers who co-host Diversify Your Shelves together. Masha (she/her) is a 26-year-old aspec booknerd from Slovenia. She is currently writing
her master thesis, while working full-time in a bookstore and juggling bookstagram, blogging, and her endless TBR.
Mary (she/her) is 20 years old, queer, and from Germany. Being a university student with a major in publishing, creating bookish content on multiple platforms and working in the production department of a publishing house means she’s surrounded by books 24/7 – and she wouldn’t want it any other way.
Diversify Your Shelves is a book club dedicated to reading and uplifting marginalized voices and the joy of discovering new favourite books together. Our aim is to encourage readers to read diverse books all year round.
How do you research the books that you promote?
We recommend books that we have read and loved ourselves, that our friends enjoyed or that we find through keeping up with publishing news and researching diverse books. We always make sure to look up #OwnVoices reviews so we hopefully manage to only promote books that our followers will end up enjoying.
You host a book club every month. How can someone take part in it?
We announce our books of the month a couple of weeks before the readalong starts on Instagram and our followers can let us know if they would like to join us. They can participate by being added to group chats on Instagram that are created for every book we read. When we announce our books of the month, we also decide on a set reading schedule that allows us to discuss certain chapters every day without having to worry about spoiling everyone else. A book club chat is hosted via Zoom once the readalong has ended.
How do you choose the book of the month?
Our book club is dedicated to reading recently released diverse books together. Most of our book club picks are Young Adult novels as this is the age group we and most of our members tend to reach for, but the genre, themes and representation always change. From coming-of-age stories about teens trying to figure out who they are or sweet high school rom-coms to epic fantasies about magical worlds or murderous dark academia – we love going on new adventures every month. Sometimes we choose a book that both of us are really excited about and that we think our members will love, sometimes we put up a poll on Instagram and let our followers decide what book they want to read next. With more and more diverse books being published every year, it’s definitely getting quite hard to only choose one book every month but we’re so happy that there are so many that we can choose from when not too long ago the number of diverse books being released every month was a lot smaller.
Are you always the mediator for the book club or does it alternate between participants?
We’re always the ones hosting the readalongs and book club chats, and we try to keep everyone engaged by asking discussion questions and talking about our thoughts of the books. However, everyone can chime in and discuss themes or questions that they would like to chat about as well.
You’ve recently started your own blog. What prompted you to create a blog on top of your Instagram page?
One of our goals for 2022 is to work more closely with authors and creators in the book community. When we brainstormed ideas, we quickly realized that there were certain types of posts (interviews, guest posts, etc.) that would work a lot better in a different format: a blog. We love Instagram and will definitely keep posting content on our account regularly but sometimes we have more to share than what can fit into 10 slides of an Instagram post. We’re really excited for everything that we have planned for our blog and have been overwhelmed by the love and excitement we’ve received since starting this new venture.
What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own bookstagram page?
Our main advice is this: Post about books you love and are passionate about and everything else will follow! You’ll meet amazing people who adore the same books as you do AND discover some other wonderful books you might’ve never stumbled upon without bookstagram. This community is really kind so don’t be shy and interact with fellow bookstagrammers.
What are your future plans for Diversify Your Shelves?
Our future plans include to just keep creating content on multiple platforms and to read diverse books together. We also host bi-annual events called Diversify Your June and Diversify Your December, and we would love to expand those by maybe hosting panels or live shows with special guests. We’ve also just launched a series on our blog called Show Your S(h)elf and we plan on inviting many authors, content creators, and bookish shop owners to talk about themselves and the books they love.
If you’ve been meaning to read more diverse books but didn’t know where to start, I recommend that you check their page. You will find beautiful designs, easy to engage with, and different categories of tropes and representations that you may want in your books. Thank you again to Marsha and Mary for doing this interview.
Blog Post by Juliette @a_spoonful_of_juliette
All photos belong to @diversifyyourshelves, @onceandfuturebooknerd and @bookstorevibe
Comments