Petra Mayer
Petra Mayer (she/her) is an editor (and the resident nerd) at NPR Books, focusing on fiction, and particularly genre fiction. She brings to the job passion, speed-reading skills, and a truly impressive collection of Doctor Who doodads. You can also hear her on the air and on the occasional episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Previously, she was an associate producer and director for All Things Considered on the weekends. She handled all of the show's books coverage, and she was also the person to ask if you wanted to know how much snow falls outside NPR's Washington headquarters on a Saturday, how to belly dance, or what pro wrestling looks like up close and personal.
Mayer originally came to NPR as an engineering assistant in 1994, while still attending Amherst College. After three years spending summers honing her soldering skills in the maintenance shop, she made the jump to Boston's WBUR as a newswriter in 1997. Mayer returned to NPR in 2000 after a roundabout journey that included a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a two-year stint as an audio archivist and producer at the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. She still knows how to solder.
-
San Diego Comic-Con kicked off Thursday, with more than 130,000 attendees expected. Big draws of the day were Lin-Manuel Miranda and Arnold Schwarzenegger — and a surprise appearance from Tom Cruise.
-
Judith Krantz, queen of the 'sex and shopping' novel, has died at 91. Beginning with Scruples in 1978, she sold millions of books with her signature mix of high fashion, hot sex and female ambition.
-
Author Ursula K. Le Guin has died at age 88. She was a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy who brought feminism into her work and raised the genres into literature.
-
NPR Books editor Petra Mayer was in the Manhattan neighborhood on Saturday when she saw what looked like a pressure cooker on the sidewalk. Suddenly she found herself at the heart of the night's news.
-
Peter Rabbit — older and stouter — returns this fall in a newly published Beatrix Potter story, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots. It was probably written just before World War I and then abandoned.
-
Matt de la Peña becomes the first Hispanic author to win the Newbery award for children's literature, while the Caldecott picture-book prize went to a book about the real-life Winnie the Pooh.
-
We get hundreds of books in the mail every week, and some always fall through the cracks. NPR's Petra Mayer singles out a biography of a Sikh princess turned suffragette for a second look.
-
The "sad puppies" — a group of disgruntled, mostly white male science fiction authors — struck out at the Hugo Awards over the weekend after trying to stuff the ballot box.
-
The prestigious Hugo Awards, which honor science fiction and fantasy writing, will be held Saturday. Lately, they have been given to more and more women and writers of color as the world of sci-fi opens up — and that's prompted a backlash from a group of mostly white male writers who call themselves the "Sad Puppies."
-
The prolific author, who died Thursday at 66, was known for his novels about the fantasy planet Discworld, populated by humans, witches, trolls and dwarves — and a very human, sympathetic Death.