Petra Mayer
Petra Mayer died on November 13, 2021. She has been remembered by friends and colleagues, including all of us at NPR. The Petra Mayer Memorial Fund for Internships has been created in her honor.
Petra Mayer (she/her) was an editor (and the resident nerd) at NPR Books, focusing on fiction, and particularly genre fiction. She brought to the job passion, speed-reading skills, and a truly impressive collection of Doctor Who doodads. You could also hear her on the air and on the occasional episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Prior to her role at NPR Books, 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.
-
Philip Pullman returns to the world of his beloved Dark Materials trilogy in The Book of Dust. We have an exclusive first peek at young protagonist Malcolm, his canoe, and the day his life changes.
-
What's the best way to get people reading comics? Hook 'em young. And comics for early readers are booming — even big publishers like DC, famed for grim and gritty, are getting in on the action.
-
In honor of our big summer reader poll of favorite comics and graphic novels, we've asked a few very cool cartoonists to tell us — or really, draw for us — what comics mean to them. -
When Ruthanna Emrys first read H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," her sympathies were squarely with the monsters — and that sympathy was the seed of her new book, Winter Tide.
-
Author Paula Hawkins was down on her luck when her 2015 book The Girl on the Train became a smash hit. Now she's grappling with success and preparing to launch her followup, Into the Water.
-
Author Neil Gaiman first encountered the Norse gods in the pages of old Marvel Comics reprints, when he was 6 years old. Now, he's written his own versions of these ancient tales of gods and monsters.
-
Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale landed on top of Amazon's best-seller lists this week, following other classics like 1984 and It Can't Happen Here. She has some thoughts on our next great dystopia. -
George Orwell's dystopian classic is dominating the news these days. It happens to be NPR Books editor Petra Mayer's all-time favorite; she says it's one of those books that burrows deep in your mind.
-
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.
