Wayetu Moore on Escaping Liberia's Civil War and Creating a Nonprofit to Improve Literacy in Underrepresented Cultures

Famous Failures

Moore is the founder of One Moore Book. One Moore Book is a nonprofit organization that encourages reading among children of countries with low literacy rates and underrepresented cultures by publishing culturally relevant books that speak to their truths, and by creating bookstores and reading corners that serve their communities. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015.

Her writing can be found in Guernica Magazine, The Rumpus, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featured in The Economist Magazine, NPR, NBC, BET and ABC, among others, for her work in advocacy for diversity in children’s literature.

Her novel, She Would Be King, will be released by Graywolf Press in September, 2018. Her memoir is also forthcoming with Graywolf.

In the interview, Wayetu shares her story of escaping Liberia during its civil war and moving to the United States. We talk about how reading books helped her rehabilitation during this difficult time period and inspired her to start a publishing company of her own, One Moore Book, dedicating to celebrating multicultural stories that are largely missing in the larger industry. She shares with us the failures she encountered along the way and the lessons she learned from them.

You can follow Wayetu on Instagram and pre-order her upcoming novel at this link.

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