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Items of interest concerning Hawthorne Books and its authors

Robots Are People, Too: On the Ways Writers Use Non-Human Characters to Tell Human Stories: Allegories, Companions, Advisor, Otherworldly, and Outsiders, by Daniel Hope for Lit Hub

09 Oct 2023|

“The rise of chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude has revived old debates about just how human a machine can be. When it comes to the capabilities of these current tools, the answer is simple (spoiler: they’re not), but in the world of literature, the answer is very different.

Sapient machines have appeared in stories for over a hundred years, but they’re just one example in our long tradition of using non-human characters to tell stories about ourselves. Long before Asimov wrote his...Forward

Thank you to John Scalzi for including Daniel Hope on The Big Idea!

09 Oct 2023|

“When I was young, I sympathized with the robots I found in books and movies. Like them, I didn’t fully understand the humans around me, and I found that most of the time I was replicating the emotions and reactions of others rather than expressing what was going on inside my head. That’s why it seemed natural to make the protagonist of my book a robot. Even if neither of us understood the humans around us, we could at least explore together.” -Daniel Hope

To read the entire article go to...Forward

LA Times Studios features Sidney Morrison, author of Frederick Douglass: A Novel (Juneteenth 2024)

15 Aug 2023|

4,656 views Jan 7, 2022
After Sidney Morrison became a teacher at a Torrance high school, he learned that the school had a tradition of having a “slave day” auction where students would bid on other students to serve them for a day. That tradition soon ended. While the city’s population has diversified over the decades, Morrison says the Torrance police scandal shows the persistence of racism continues.

THE ONLY HISTORICAL NOVEL IN PRINT BASED ON FREDERICK DOUGLASS

For immediate release 08 Aug 2023

Contact: Rhonda Hughes

503-327-8849 rhughes@hawthornebooks.com |

Based on the life of Frederick Douglass, the most prominent African American of the 19th Century, Sidney Morrison has created a mesmerizing and important historical novel richly detailing the Civil War Era and the Institution of Slavery that Douglass was instrumental in ending.

Frederick Douglass escapes enslavement in Maryland and becomes a prominent abolitionist leader; one of the nation’s most skilled orators; and publisher of an antislavery newspaper called The North Star. He lives with...Forward

Kristen and Ville Jokinen join Leah Beno to talk about Joy Ride on Good Morning, Minneapolis

01 Aug 2023|