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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NPR's Petra Mayer profiles YA author Ann Brashares, whose new book The Here and Now follows a young girl and her community who've escaped a terrible future via time travel and landed in our present.
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In laid-back Key West, most people get around by bike. So NPR's Petra Mayer had to learn. -
NPR staff and critics selected more than 200 standout titles. Now it's up to you: Choose your own adventure! Use our tags to search through books and find the perfect read.
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The classic British sci-fi series Doctor Who turns 50 today — though the time-traveling Doctor himself is probably somewhere on the wrong side of 1000. NPR's Petra Mayer has an appreciation of the show and the enduring appeal of its ancient, alien hero. -
Jo Baker's Longbourn retells the events of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the servants. Baker tells NPR Books editor Petra Mayer that the predicament of the Bennet sisters is well-known, so she wanted to explore the situation of the servant girls with no father, home or dowry.
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Lizzie Skurnick has written for and about teens, and now she's venturing into publishing, with a new imprint dedicated to beloved and forgotten young adult novels. Skurnick says classic YA isn't just about fluffy romance; these are books about real life, which deserve to be preserved and celebrated. -
Hugh Howey is the author of the dystopian WOOL series, about a future in which the remains of humanity are living underground in giant self-sustaining silos. The first volume of WOOL was a self-publishing sensation; the latest volume, Dust, has just been released. -
Debbie Macomber's books don't get a lot of critical attention, but they've sold in the hundreds of millions. Her fans feel like they know and love the woman behind the words, so her publisher threw a party for them. -
Marcus Sakey's new novel, Brilliance, imagines an America where superhumanly talented savants are hunted by a rogue government agency. Sakey says the titular "brilliants" are "objectively superior to the rest of us. Which is a scary concept to normal people."
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Food porn and pirate adventure are two great tastes that taste great together in Eli Brown's Cinnamon and Gunpowder. When a pirate kidnaps a chef to serve her own gustatory pleasures, his creativity is taxed as he prepares feasts — like a Regency-era Iron Chef — using only shipboard supplies.
