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.
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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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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. -
Introducing NPR's cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, book/movie/TV recommendation algorithm: HUMANZ. -
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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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.
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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.
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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."
