this episode is brought to you by coffee mate coffee mate is the world's biggest coffee lover because we love all the ways you enjoy wait wait coffee mate can't love coffee more than me I'm a foodie I went to kodo just for a Nitro Machel late what oh I have to finish the ad coffee mate for the love of coffee what's new from Apple there's the new iPhone 16 Pro built for Apple intelligence and it comes with the allnew camera control giving you an easier way to quickly access your camera tools the new Apple watch series 10 has our biggest display and our thinnest design ever and this it's the sound of active noise cancellation now available on one of two new airpods 4 models so quiet check out all of the new products and new features at apple.com you can even buy yourself something new see apple.com for product availability updates Apple Intelligence coming this fall on about books we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting Insider interviews with publishing industry experts we'll also give you updates on current non-fiction authors and books the latest book reviews and we'll talk about the current non-fiction books featured on c-spans book TV and now on book TV we want to introduce you to Patrick Oliver he is a founder of a group called say it loud readers and writers Mr Oliver what is that group we are a group that uh Advocate promote uh literary events and activities in communities around the country I specifically Target Larch Arkansas my birthplace in Dallas Texas where I currently reside but we love the idea of of books being in community uh author talks uh symposiums panel discussions just an environment uh where young people parents and just Community people are coming together to celebrate literature and where did you come up with the idea you know I I'm a southern guy uh born in Little Rock Arkansas we love Soul music We Love Gospel Music we love blues and we love Jan Brown because he's the hardest working man in show business so his song said Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud resonated with me because that you know growing up I grew up again in the South Little Rock Arkansas and during that time you know uh it was a black pride movement going around the country and I wanted uh my organization uh to kind of say the same thing to say it loud about literature and you founded this in 1997 1997 you know after you know spending uh 13 years in Southern California working in the Aerospace industry um I went back to Little Rock Arkansas to just visit family you know just hang out and in up staying more years than I thought and um that Community was looking for literary activities to do with young people and because of my time in Southern California hanging out at bookstores literary events I thought hey why don't I try to give something back for my birthplace where I was born why the focus on minority communities you know we there is a a push around the country uh to expose young people to literature literature that promotes Pride self-identity you know that sort of thing so um in some communities that is not being done often enough so I decide to step up let me take that mantle let me push that effort and look at these young people particularly boys you know who you know as you well know uh Peter um Sports you know boys all a lot of boys in our community want to be the next multi-million dollar athlete but you also have a also percentage of young people who like uh to be nerves like myself growing up I love books I love reading I love exploring so there's that huge group of boys and girls who like literature so I decide to focus on boys and girls who are minority communities who may not have access to literary activities like I mentioned earlier now you wrote or you edited a book in 2006 called Turn the Page and you don't stop sharing successful chapters in our lives with youth and in a review of that book the African-American literature club book review said quote for some reason reading isn't generally considered cool among most black teens especially males in inner city schools or self-destructive attitude which only lessens their prospects for Success later in life fortunately Patrick Oliver has staked his career on reversing this suicidal trend what kind of books do you put in kids hands look fantastic you know books books around poetry you know I grew up again in the South you know Ebony and jaet magazine published by John Johnson in that in those Publications those magazines was a lot of poetry so poetry kind of because it had a similarity with rap music rhyme you know it had similarity R&B music that I grew up on I decided hey let me start this project off utilizing poetry and I work with a gentleman by name of Dr Tony Medina who's a professor at Howard University English Professor he helped me lunch uh say it loud in like Arkansas by coming there and spending four or five days with us just talking to young people about the power of creative writing the power of poetry and so you know that was very exciting and dynamic to be able to do that and then working at Third World Press uh for a number of years with Hakim M booty as director of sales and marketing working around a poet you know and then been exposed to poets like Sterling plump and Shelly Norman Ellis just some brilliant uh people so listen reading their poetry and then sharing it with young people seeing young people resonate toward it because again of the Rhythm and rhyme in the Poetry um I just thought let me uh expose these young people uh to a poetry more and more and the results were were Dynamic well Mr Oliver as you well know you can put book s out on the shelf or in front of people but to get them to open them and to understand them how do you accomplish that again back to my earlier point of Hosting literary activities you know um if you look on my website or any my social media Pages you'll see you know I'm part of some organizations that's promoting literatures sometime I reach out to those organizations say hey how can we be a part of it to host a writing workshop for young people or reading or they'll contact me say hey Patrick we love what you're doing with young people can you come and work at our organizations to facilitate a workshop with young people so uh young people meeting writers and authors a lot of young people for the first time they're meeting authors I've had opportunity to work with Derek Barnes uh quite frequently uh who is uh has won probably every major literary award is for children's book katak Newberry ber Scott King and young people just resonated toward him when he walked into the room because they read his book and they saw the resiliency identified in his books you know his book titled Crown old to the fresh cut it's about a young boy going into a Barbie shop and coming out celebrating who he is and his other book uh I am very good thing again celebrating boys identity and there other he has books for girls Ruby and the Book of boys so those books and with those auor appearances you know appearan we did in Chicago with the open book program those young people crazy like they would go crazy for an uh athlete or Entertainer who come to their school so that is what we try to do is put these authors and writers in front of these young people in community centers in bookstores in libraries let them come out and enjoy themselves and they find out Peter these authors and writers are just like me they you they talk like me they look like me they like the same thing I like they look the same kind of food I like they grew up like me they enjoy bicycles they enjoy video games so that's the attraction a lot of ways for young people and how to get them involved your teen requested a ride but this time not from you it's through their Uber teen account you drive your teenager around a lot to their friend Jacob's house their other friend Jake's house to James's to Jaden's to jaylen's too oh Mom this is Jake's house not Jacobs Now with an Uber teen account your teen can request a ride under your supervision the'll ride with a highly rated driver and with live trip tracking you'll follow along the whole ride to their friends houses that all sound the same add your teen to your Uber account today see app for details Bye Mom I just mail chimped my marketing you MailChimp your what I mail chimped my marketing with AI to create an effective marketing campaign in minutes no MailChimp and way yes MailChimp and way now I can hyper personalize my campaigns across email and SMS you can do all that with MailChimp what did I just MailChimp and say MailChimp your marketing with the number one AI powered email marketing and automation platform into it MailChimp number one based on publicly available data on competitors customers plans SMS available as add-ons visit mailchimp.com well speaking of video games how do you compete with social media and video games to get attention to a longer form book I would Li say it was it's not difficult it is a huge challenge even in my family you know with my nephews and nieces particularly my nephews they love this technology and I'm quite sure growing up I would have enjoyed this technology as well because it's extremely fascinating you know to be to P play a game that would you know just go beyond your imagination um so it is a huge challenge but at the same time I'm asking parents and community centers and Community leaders to uh get behind the effort to promote more literary events in your community you know asking radio stations you know who are DJs to host authors you know as some of your special guests to talk to besides athletes and entertainers you know to to give it that extra effort that is needed because it it is a huge challenge because again those games are fun you know the YK basketball game you know all all those games out there and I understand why they enjoy it because growing up I enjoyed the toys and and different you know things that were put in front of me to enjoy I explored them as well you know because uh as a young person these Minds that we have are so uh curious about new things particularly technology and these young people are exposed to cell phones and and and and iPads so they have access to again some wonderful and fun games that are they games but they also have found ways many schools and school districts to uh help young people learn they they downloading uh books on the iPads on their phone so you know we have to find ways to make both of those happen as a young person how are you exposed to books I grew up in East lck uh Arkansas about a mile and a half from the uh William just Clinton Presidential Library uh it was called the holles worth Court housing projects so we didn't have a lot to do um the newspaper came we had two newspapers in little Arkansas at the time the Arkansas gazette Arkansas Democrat and um everybody in that Community wanted to keep on what was going on you know at that time was only maybe three or four channels that we will watch Major channels anyway we didn't have you know the uh access to streaming and all of that so we found joy in those newspapers the news uh I love sports so my parents made sure Sports industri were at my house they would take us to the library and we would read read the sports illustrators that were at the library and they also encouraged us to check out uh books and the churches I uh grew up in at uh in the South um they promoted uh black poetry you know myangelo Paul L Dumar we did skits we get to read those books to do those Easter Sunday skits and you know skits doing Special times uh for the church so it was the community that I grew up in that was extremely uh I would say brilliant because we had teachers and different people who uh lived in the neighborhood with us so they kind of knew us and so they would again bring those uh efforts to get us to read more again to our community to our neighborhoods to our churches and the community centers that'll be hung in East L Patrick Oliver how involved are you with the public schools at this point we say it loud we do a lot of work at Public Schools uh recently we did something with the lar School District Chico Elementary we had a fantastic time myself another author spent almost a full day there of uh the feville North Carolina School District I'm sored uh trumbl School District in faville North Carolina we had a great time uh with them we we were working with the D Public Schools uh indirectly Independent School District indirectly so we're doing a lot of work with school district would like to do more we like to see them again bring more and more authors to their schools to these young people can meet those authors how are you funded we're funded through various Partnerships you know uh we just got great news yesterday uh the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site is going to support a literary series that we're going to do in Little Rock Arkansas it's going to be a series that goes to the end of of the year so monthly young people get chance to go to a a different venue in Little Rock and meet some amazing authors that we have scheduled uh to come and participate so I'm excited about that and we also the city of Dallas office of arts and culture uh uh supports my efforts by providing me with contracts to go into the communities and do writing workshops in those writing workshops I try to invite published authors to participate in those W workshops with me so with these Partnerships that I and collaborations that I've uh been working with you know like the um the acatic museum uh here in uh Dallas we have a big Book Festival coming up in November you know they support a lot of my work in the Austin African-American Book Festival they been supporting my work over the years as well how do you measure success when young people come to an event um and smiles and um can't wait for the offer to sign their book often times measure their success for there five children in attendance or there's 150 children in attendance of the smiles and the radiation of course they gonna take that sign book they have and go back to their Community their neighborhood and say hey I got this book signed here so I went to they GNA make that book a part of their school show and tell but success is also measured by the parents engagement you know I really really want to see our parents engage more with our projects you know we do a lot of in school uh things which is great great attendance obviously because some built-in audience but when you do the community events your school in public libraries at bookstores I want to see parents bring their children to those events you know I got friends who I B all the time about hey donate to our project so we can buy books to give away to the children uh who participate or attend our our projects and programs so the success again is measured by attendance it's also measured by the impact that we've heard from Educators who said Mr thank you so much for bringing that uh breakfast books and boys project for our school which is one of our primary initiatives and so because they saw a change in boys attitude the exciting for boys to go to a a on a school day Wednesday morning at 7:15 there at A literacy program enjoying themselves for 35 minutes Patrick Oliver is the founder of the literary group say it loud readers and writers thanks for joining us on book TV thank you so much the opportunity [Music]