Biographies & Memoirs

Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw: Reimagining Success as a Disabled Achiever

by Eddie Ndopu

available in August, hardcover, Legacy Lit Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his mobility. He was told that he wouldn’t live beyond age five and yet, Ndopu thrived. By his late teens, he had become a sought-after speaker, travelling the world to address audiences about disability justice. He was ecstatic when he was later accepted on a full scholarship into one of the world’s most prestigious schools, Oxford University. But he soon learns that it’s not just the medical community he must thwart— it’s the educational one too.

Walking with Sam : A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain

by Andrew McCarthy

available now, hardcover, Hachette

You may know him best from the “Brat Pack” but this time McCarthy is on a journey of self-discovery and resolution with his teenage son. The trials and tribulations of their journey are wonderful and make this a great adventure-filled read. It’s jam packed with awesome history as well! –Maddie

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

by Christian Cooper

available in June, hardcover, Random House

This is Christian Cooper’s story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days as a writer for Marvel Comics, where Cooper introduced the first gay storyline, to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas, and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding is Cooper’s invitation into the wonderful world of birds, and what they can teach us about life, if only we would stop and listen.

August Wilson : A Life

by Patti Hartigan

available in August, hardcover, Simon & Schuster

August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Through his brilliant use of vernacular speech, Wilson developed unforgettable characters who epitomized the trials and triumphs of the African American experience. He said that he didn’t research his plays but wrote from “the blood’s memory,” a sense of racial history that he believed African Americans shared. Author and theater critic Patti Hartigan traced his ancestry back to slavery, and his plays echo with uncanny similarities to the history of his ancestors.

Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award, the Whatcom READS 2024 book selection is Red Paint by a Coast Salish author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes, Sasha taqwŠablu LaPointe.

With Red Paint, this Indigenous artist blends the aesthetics of punk rock with the traditional spiritual practices of the women in her lineage in this bold, contemporary journey to reclaim her heritage and unleash her power and voice while searching for a permanent home. Examining what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art, Sasha offers up an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas amplified by the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples. Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience, and, above all, the ability to heal.

Read the book then join us for a series of related events building up to an author visit in March, 2024.

Top entries are selected for publication in the Whatcom WRITES anthology and contributors are invited to read at a public presentation. See whatcomreads.org for submission guidelines. Have fun!