How CAKE Literary makes space for new voices and untold stories, “baking” diversity into every book. 

According to the most recent statistics from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison, there are more children’s books about animals than there are about African, African Amerian, Asian Pacific Islander, Asian Pacific Islander, Latinx, American Indian, and First Nations children combined. 

Sona Charaipotra is one of the many people in the publishing industry whose work is changing those statistics. As an author and co-founder of CAKE Literary, she is bringing more diverse books into the world. She recently told NetGalley Insights what kinds of stories she is passionate about sharing with the public, how it feels to be making room for underrepresented voices in publishing, and what’s on the horizon for CAKE Literary through 2020 and beyond.

What is the origin story behind CAKE Literary? 

Dhonielle and I met the first day of class in our MFA program in Writing for Children at the New School. We bonded pretty quickly — talking about our favorite books and TV shows and sharing our work over pepperoni pizza at Patsy’s. One of the things that always came up in our conversations was how rarely we got to see ourselves as the hero of the story as kids, a fact that held true for my own kids even back in 2012. So we decided to do something about it, both with our own stories and eventually in founding CAKE Literary, which is a boutique book packager with a decidedly diverse bent. Like Alloy or Glasstown Entertainment, we’re not a publisher or an agency, but specifically a packager, which means we come up with fun, creative, big concepts, find the right voice to tell the story, then walk the writer through the publishing process. 

What need does CAKE Literary serve in the industry? What problem does it address or what hole does it fill?

A lot of times with publishing, especially when it comes to stories by people of color, it’s easy to presume that pain is what sells. But I think recent successes have shown time and again that we are also allowed to celebrate the joy in our communities. Our focus is on lifting marginalized voices and showing that we, too, can be the ones to save the day, to find love, to become heroes of our own joyful stories. I think the joy part of it is so critical. Yes, our stories tackle meaty, real issues, but they also put fun front and center. 

How are diversity and inclusion “baked in” to CAKE Literary as a central part of its business model & vision?

We envision the diversity of our stories to be organic, in the sense that it’s ever-present, but it’s not the main thrust or plot of the story. It’s in the very bones of the world building, and it helps shape and define every part of the character and point of view. It’s truly baked in, in the sense that it sort of disappears the way an egg does when you bake a cake — it’s necessary and ever-present, and you can’t really remove it. You wouldn’t have the same cake if you did. Our first series, Tiny Pretty Things, is pitched as Pretty Little Liars at a cutthroat Manhattan ballet conservatory — completely high concept and fun, right? But it’s got three very different POVs, and each is grounded in who the girls are as people. Gigi is black, from California, and the new girl. June is half-Korean, from Queens, and struggling with both food and family issues. Bette is white, blonde, and the classic legacy. These cultural, socio-economic, and racial factors define the very different experiences each of these three girls have in the very same setting. The diversity is organic and inseparable, a big part of the story without becoming the whole story. 

What does it mean to you to be a spacemaker – shepherding unrepresented voices into the mainstream?

It is honestly my favorite part of the job. Only now am I beginning to see representations of something akin to my experience on the page, but my kids will have so many more options. That’s astounding. They are devouring all these stories that serve as reflections, but also all the stories that offer them windows into other experiences. And it’s a profound thing to find a voice that needs to be lifted, to be heard, and help them navigate the publishing process, to share both the highs and the lows with them, because, let’s face it, publishing can be a very rough ride, especially for marginalized writers, and you need that safety net to fall into. There are people who held the door open for me and Dhonielle, and we are thrilled to pull others through it, too. Because as the latest CCBC numbers show [seen below] there’s still so much work to be done.

Who else is doing work to make publishing a more equitable and diverse industry?

There are so many people who continue to push. First and foremost, I have to point to the inimitable Ellen Oh and the whole We Need Diverse Books team, which includes Dhonielle and Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, as well a slew of amazing volunteers who have been working tirelessly now for five years and counting. The change that they’ve affected is profound — as others have said, this has become a movement, rather than a moment. And then there are the #diversityjedi teachers, educators and librarians, who keep the critical conversations going, like Dr. Debbie Reese, Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, Cheryl Willis Hudson, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and others. And there are editors, publishers,  who have been championing change for years — Andrea Davis Pinkney, Alvina Ling, Zareen Jaffrey, Namrata Tripathi, Beth Phelan, and others. And of course storytellers, booksellers, and book champions, like Glory Edim, Saraciea Fennell, Hannah Oliver Depp, Preeti Chhibber, Renee Watson, and others. [Check out Preeti’s interview with NetGalley Insights here!] The voices are there, and they’re doing the work. 

How does your work as an author influence your work with CAKE, and vice versa?

I think it goes hand in hand. Dhonielle and I had to use our own work — our first series, Tiny Pretty Things — to launch the company before anyone would begin to take us seriously. We had to go through the process and experience ourselves, and bring the lessons that we learned from it with us. Luckily, we had some great mentors along the way, and a strong community of fellow authors who were super-supportive too. Hopefully we can give back in the same way, by being there as mentors to new writers as they make their way in publishing, too. 

Your new YA book, Symptoms of a Heartbreak comes out on July 2 through Macmillan/Imprint . What qualities make it a CAKE book?

Symptoms of a Heartbreak is a classic CAKE project. It’s fun, high concept and hopefully a delicious read, and the organic diversity informs every part of it. I pitch it as Doogie Howser meets The Mindy Project — it’s about a 16-year-old girl genius doctor who’s doing her first real medical internship — and falls in love with a patient. It’s got a classic romantic comedy structure, but Saira’s background as an Indian-American teen informs so much of her family life, her work ethic, her point of view, the micro and macro aggressions she faces in her work and life. It also informs the way she views love and romance. You can’t take that out of the character or the story itself and have it remain the same. 

What’s next for CAKE, through 2019 and beyond?

Ah! We are so excited about what’s cooking! This year alone, CAKE has six books landing on shelves, including the second installment of the Love Sugar Magic series by Anna Meriano (Harper/Walden), The Battle by Karuna Riazi(Simon & Schuster/Salaam Reads), The Trouble With Shooting Stars by Meg Cannistra (Simon & Schuster), A Match Made in Mehendi by Nandini Bajpai (Little Brown), and Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia (Disney/Rick Riordan Presents)! Several of these titles are available on Netgalley now, by the way! 

We’ve got a lot of amazing things lined up for 2020 and beyond, and everyone should definitely stay tuned for lots of TV and movie news coming up, too! Plus, our next venture is into the realm of adult fiction with our LayerCAKE imprint. But we’re always on the lookout for amazing, unique voices. That’s the best part of this job, really — getting to find these astounding new voices and then share them with the world. 

Keep up with CAKE Literary on Twitter and at CAKELiterary.com. Follow Sona Charaipotra on Twitter or at SonaCharaipotra.com

Bio: The author of the YA doc dramedy Prognosis: Love And Death, Sona Charaipotra is not a doctor — much to her pediatrician parents’ chagrin. They were really hoping she’d grow up to take over their practice one day. Instead, she became a writer, working first as a celebrity reporter at People and (the dearly departed) TeenPeople magazines, and contributing to publications from the New York Times to TeenVogue. These days, she uses her Masters in screenwriting from NYU and her MFA in creative writing from the New School to poke plot holes in her favorite teen TV shows, like The Bold Type — for work of course. She’s the co-founder of CAKE Literary, a boutique book packaging company with a decidedly diverse bent, and the co-author (with Dhonielle Clayton) of the YA dance dramas Tiny Pretty Things and Shiny Broken Pieces, as well as the upcoming psychological thriller Rumor Game. She’s also the interim editor of the Barnes & Noble teen blog.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

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