On Friday, August 8, we quietly rolled out a major update to our Black Lit Network project. The first visible change came on July 29, when we replaced "Novel Generator Machine," the portal’s original name, with "Literary Navigator Device."
From October 11, 2021, until July 28, 2025, we ran the Novel Generator Machine as a resource offering users recommendations of novels by Black writers based on their preferences and interests. On July 28, I met with Meg Smith, interim director of the IRIS Center, and Dan Schreiber, IRIS web developer, to discuss broader updates to the main site.
A key expansion involves broadening our focus beyond novels to also feature short stories, poems, comic books, autobiographies/memoirs, and essays. When the news concerning the Mellon grant was released on July 29, we figured we'd get an increase in traffic, so we decided to make the change from Generator Machine to Navigator, even though the results still only showed novels.
Over the last week, we worked to create a preliminary version of the updated database for the Navigator. Kenton Rambsy and Jade Harrison collaborated on a dataset of approximately 140 short stories by Black writers. I created datasets of 86 poems, 30 autobiographies/memoirs, 25 comic books, and 12 essays.
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