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.
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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. -
The house Alan Moore was born in was torn down in 1969 — along with most of the rest of his neighborhood. But in his new novel, Jerusalem, the legendary comics creator brings it all back to life. -
60 years ago, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cured your parenting problems with Leadership Pills, well-mannered pigs and Ignorance Tonic. Now, her niece Missy takes up the mantle in a new series of books.
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Snidely Whiplash may have been famous for yelling "Curses, foiled again!" But sometimes the bad guys win — from Milton's Satan to X-men foe Magneto, we're taking a look at the ones who get away. -
Chynna Clugston Flores' cult comic about a music-crazy high schooler and her mad mod friends is back after more than a decade. It's a largely autobiographical look at teen life in the early '90s.
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The latest book in J.K. Rowling's series, really a script for a play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," went on sale at midnight. We check in with fans who lined up, wands in hand, to get a copy.
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As the launch of the upcoming film coincides with the heroine's Comic-Con fandom, Wonder Woman appears to be hooking new fans for the same reasons she was birthed in 1941: justice, peace and feminism. -
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.
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The PEN/Allen award is given annually to big-name authors who embody the organization's mission "to oppose repression in any form." Rowling is a frequent target — and vocal opponent — of censorship. -
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.
