Podcasts about hurston wright legacy award

It’s probably cliché to say that sport imitates life, but Hanif Abdurraqib traces the intimate details of basketball legends and faded school-yard stars in an unforgettable book about sport, life, and the places we call home. Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and author of the new book, "There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,” is the selection for this year's Reading Across Rhode Island Statewide Read, sponsored by the Rhode Island Center for the Book. His first full length poetry collection, “The Crown Ain't Worth Much,” was released in June 2016 and named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, “They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. His book, “Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest” became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His 2021 book, “A Little Devil In America,” was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on Speaking Out of Place I talk with award-winning novelist Laila Lalami about her new novel, The Dream Hotel. What happens when the state, with the pretext of protecting public safety, can detain indefinitely certain individuals whose dreams seem to indicate they may be capable of committing a crime?  Set in a precarious world where sleep-enhancing devices and algorithms provide the tools and formulae for making one's unconscious a witness to one's possible waking life, this novel touches on a myriad of political, philosophical, and moral concerns as they particularly connect to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, privacy, and  the security state.Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times.  She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University.  She lives in Los Angeles.  

Casualties of Truth, inspired by Francis-Sharma's time at South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation's Amnesty Hearings, is a gripping tale that explores themes of justice, revenge, race, parenting, and of course, the complications of friendship.It is a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa.Her third offering, Casualties of Truth is published by Grove Atlantic and will be celebrated by Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival on Feb 18, 2025 at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. Get tickets here https://events.humanitix.com/casualties-of-truthTicket linkAbout Lauren Francis-SharmaLauren Francis-Sharma is the author of Book of the Little Axe, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel 'Til the Well Runs Dry. She was a MacDowell fellow and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College. She resides near Washington, DC, with her family.

Chris Albani and Kwame Dawes chat with Dion O'Reilly about KUMI: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set THE LIMITED-EDITION BOX SET is a project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks every year by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry. The nine poets included in this box set are: Nurain Oládèjì, Sarpong Osei Asamoah, Claudia Owusu, Nome Emeka Patrick, Qhali, Connor Cogill, Feranmi Ariyo, Dare Tunmise, and Adams Adeosun. KWAME DAWES is the author of numerous books of poetry and other works of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent poetry collection is Sturge Town which was published by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and W.W. Norton in the US. Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the series editor of the African Poetry Book Series, director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022, Kwame Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica, and in 2024, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica.CHRIS ABANI's prose includes The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections include Smoking the Bible, Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me the Sun, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne's Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. He holds a BA and MA in English, an MA in gender and culture, and a PhD in literature and creative writing. Abani is the recipient of a PEN USA Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He won the prestigious 2024 UNT Rilke Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Born in Nigeria, he is currently on the board of trustees, a professor of English, and director of African Studies at Northwestern University.

James—the new novel by Percival Everett—retells, reframes, and reimagines Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the black man whose flight from slavery quickly entangles with the journey of Huck, on the run after faking his own death to escape his violent father. James gives us the events of Twain's picaresque from a vital new standpoint—opening up previously unexplored plains of character consciousness as it does so—expanding and subverting the original story. And the novel doesn't just fill in the blanks about Jim's movements when our protagonists are separated, but also wrests the narrative arc itself in new and astonishing directions.Buy James here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/james-4*The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson's Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise.With rumours of a brewing war, James must face the burden he carries: the family he is desperate to protect and the constant lie he must live. And together, the unlikely pair must face the most dangerous odyssey of them all . . .From the shadows of Huck Finn's mischievous spirit, Jim emerges to reclaim his voice, defying the conventions that have consigned him to the margins.*Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books, including So Much Blue, Telephone, Dr No and The Trees, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. He has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His novel Erasure has now been adapted into the major film American Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick came on the show to discuss new books about life in our age of the polycrisis. One of these was Emily Raboteau's much acclaimed Lessons For Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”. So how, exactly, I asked the Bronx based Raboteau, do you mother against “the apocalypse”? And what does Raboteau, a amateur photographer and birdwatcher, have in common with Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher, who appeared on the show last year?Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor's Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau's writing has recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. Her distinctions include an inaugural Climate Narratives Prize from Arizona State University, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists' New York chapter, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Yaddo. She serves as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as “the poor man's Harvard.” She lives in the Bronx.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Donika Kelly joins Kevin Young to read “One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver, and her own poem “Sixteen Center.” Kelly is the author of two poetry collections, and the recipient of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she teaches at the University of Iowa.

Episode 314 - Morgan Christie - Boolean Logic - Powerful and Lyrical Essays from a New and Noteworthy Poet and Fiction WriterPowerful and Lyrical Essays from a New and Noteworthy Poet and Fiction WriterMorgan Christie's book is in conversation with various themes including race, gender inequity, socioeconomic disparities, and others as questions regarding how experiences define us are viewed through a BOOLEAN LOGIC lens, where sums do not always equal their parts. These essays intertwine sport, family, and community and other aspects that assist in shaping identities through lineage and the lessons we take from them.Literary Nonfiction. Essay. Family & Relationships. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies.About the AuthorMorgan Christie's essays, stories, and poems have appeared in Room, Callaloo, The Hawai'i Review, Sport Literate, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Variations on a Lobster's Tale, was the winner of the 2017 Alexander Posey Chapbook Prize, and her first full-length short story manuscript, These Bodies (Tolsun Books, 2020), was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction. Her most recent poetry chapbook, when they come (Black Sunflowers Press, 2021) is featured in the Forward Arts Foundation's National Poetry Day exhibit. She is the 2022 Arc Poetry Poem of the Year Prize recipient, and her collection People Without Wings (Black Sunflowers Press, 2021) is the winner of the 2022 Digging Chapbook Series Prize. Her new short story collection, Boolean Logic, is the winner of the 2023 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction Prize. Her novella Liddle Deaths (Stillhouse Press) is due out in 2024. Christie currently splits her time between North Carolina and Toronto. To learn more, please visit https://www.morganchristiewrites.com/___https://livingthenextchapter.com/podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/Finally a podcast app just for kids! KidsPod is founded on a simple idea:Every kid should have access to the power of audio.https://kidspod.app/Support the showhttps://livingthenextchapter.com/Want to support the show and get bonus content?https://www.buzzsprout.com/1927756/subscribe

Come celebrate the launch of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor's collected poems The Limitless Heart. Encompassing the breadth of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor's astounding career, The Limitless Heart is a time capsule of the boundless love, care, grief, and fortitude that make her work so stirring. With deep empathy, thoughtfulness, charisma, and lyricism, Boyce-Taylor's work explores questions of immigration, motherhood, and queer sensuality, among other themes. Grief is both an anchor and a door throughout Boyce-Taylor's poetry, as seen in Mama Phife Represents, a hybrid of memoir and verse on the death of her son, Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Questions regarding Blackness and Black womanhood in the United States are stitched throughout her books, and Boyce-Taylor leans into a more overtly defiant political register in her latest work, We Are Not Wearing Helmets, while maintaining the connective spine of the Trinidadian dialect that appears throughout all her work. Selections from these books, as well as her other poetry collections, appear in this new volume. Curated from Boyce-Taylor's body of work, The Limitless Heart encapsulates her progression as a writer throughout the decades of her highly successful career. Get The Limitless Heart from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speakers Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival (2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Mama Phife Represents (2021) won the 2022 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry by The Publishing Triangle. We Are Not Wearing Helmets (2022) was nominated for the 2023 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone, Under the Sun, What My Hand Say, Listening Skin, Three Harriets & Others, and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter (artwork by Jonathan Green). Glenis received the Governor's Award and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She was recently a recipient of the Peacemaker Award by the Upstate Mediation Center in 2022. Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times, as well as numerous literary journals nationally and internationally. Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm-k5Oqj9Ms Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly about their grand statements, big revelations, sentential seduction, queering forms, the power of vulnerability, and love poems. We're taking a break and will be back for our next episode with guests Yiyun Li & Edmund White on January 16,  2024. Happy Holidays, LitFam!   LINKS Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com www.melissafebos.com www.donikakelly.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook TRANSCRIPT Annie: (00:00) This episode is dedicated to Chuck, a dog we have loved, and Donika and Melissa's sweet pup.   Annie & Lito: Welcome to LitFriends! Hey Lit Friends!   Annie: Welcome to the show.    Lito: Today, we're speaking with memoirist Melissa Febos and poet Donika Kelly, lit friends in marriage,   Annie: About seduction, big boss feelings, and sliding into DMs.   Lito: So grab your bestie,   Annie & Lito: And get ready to fall in love!   Annie: What I love about Melissa Febos, and you can feel this across all four of her books, is how she declares herself free. There's no ambiguity to this. This is her story, not your telling of it, not your telling of her. I meet her on the page as someone who's in an act of rebellion or an act of defiance. And I was not really surprised but delighted to find that, when I read Donika Kelly, I had sort of the same reaction, same impression. And I'm wondering if that's true for you, and, Lito, what your understanding of vulnerability and its relationship to power is.   Lito: The power for me in these conversations, and the power that the authors that we speak with possess, seems to me, in the ways that they have found how they are completely unique from each other. And more so than in our other conversations, Donika and Melissa, their work is so different. And yet, as you've pointed out, the overlap, and the fire, the energy, the defiance, the fierceness is so present. And it was present in our conversation. And so inspiring.   Annie: Yeah. I'm thinking even about Melissa Febos has this Ted Talk. (01:54) Where she says "telling your secrets will set you free." And it feels that not only is that true, but it's also very much an act of self reclamation and strength, right? Where we might read it as an act of weakness. It's actually in fact, a harnessing of the self.   Lito: Right, it's not that Melissa has a need to confess. It's that she really uses writing to find the truth about herself and how she feels about something, which that could not differ more from my writing practice.   Annie: How so?   Lito: I find that I sort of, I write out of an emotion or a need to discover something, but I already sort of am aware of where I am and who I am before I start. I find the plot and the characters as I go, but I know sort of how I feel.   Annie: Yeah, I think for me, I do feel like writing is an act of discovery where maybe I put something on the page, it's the initial conception, or yeah, like you coming out of a feeling. But as I start to ask questions, right, for me, it's this process of inquiry. I excavate to something maybe a little more surprising or partially hidden or unknown to myself.   Lito: That's true. There is a discovery of, and I think you're, I think you've pointed to exactly what it is. It's the process of inquiry, and I think both of them, and obviously us, we're doing that similar thing. This is about writing, about this, this is about asking questions and writing through them.   Annie: Yeah, and Donika Kelly, we feel that in her work, her poetry over and over, even when they have the same recurring, I would say haunting images or artifacts. Each time she's turning it over and asking almost unbearable questions.   Lito: Right.   Annie: And we're joining her on the page because she is brave enough and has an iron will and says, no, I will not not look this in the eye.    Lito: That's the feeling exactly that I get from both of them is the courage, the bravura of the unflinching.   Annie: I think something that seemed to resonate with you was (03:58) how they talk about writing outside of publishing right? Yeah.   Lito: Yeah, I love I love that they talk about writing as a practice regardless, they're separated from The need to produce a work that's gonna sell in a commercial world in a capitalist society. It's more about the daily practice, and how that is a lifestyle and even what you said about the TED talk, that's just her. She's just talking about herself. Like that she's just telling an absolute truth that people don't typically talk about.   Annie: Right. And it's a conscious, active way to live inside one's life. It's a form of reflection, meditation, and rather than just moving through life, a way to make meaning of the experience.   Lito: I love that you use the word meditation because when you talk about meditation, you think of someone in a lotus position quietly being, but the meditations that both of them do, these are not quiet.   Annie: No. And of course we have to talk about how cute they are as married literary besties.   Lito: Oh my god, cute and like, they're hot for each other.   Annie: Oh my god.   Lito: It's palpable.   Annie: So palpable, sliding into DMs, chatting each other up over email.   Lito: They romanced each other, and I hope—no—I know they're gonna romance you, listener.   Annie: We'll be right back.   Lito: (05:40) Back to the show.   Annie: Melissa Febos is the author of four books, including the best-selling essay collection Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a Lambda finalist, and was named a notable book by NPR, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and others. Her craft book Body Work is a national bestseller and an Indie's Next Pick. Her forthcoming novel The Dry Season is a work of mixed form nonfiction that explores celibacy as liberatory practice. Melissa lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly, and is a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Lito: Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in poetry and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award for poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Donika has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and was long listed for the National Book Award. (06:00) Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Annie: Well, thank you for joining us for LitFriends to talk about the ultimate lit friendship. It does seem like you've won at the game of lit friends a little bit, having married your lit friend. I think of you both as writers who are in the constant act of subversion and resisting erasure. And that's the kind of work that Lito and I are drawn to, and that we're trying to do ourselves. And your work really shows us how to inhabit our bravest and most complex selves on the page. So we're really grateful for that.   Melissa: Thanks.   Annie: Yeah, of course. I mean, Donika, I think about poems of yours that my friends and I revisit constantly because we're haunted by them in the best way. They've taken residence inside of us. And you talk about what it means to have to do that work. And you've said, "to admit need and pain, desire and trauma and claim my humanity was often daunting. But the book demanded I claim my personhood."   And Melissa, I think you know how much your work means to me. I mean, as someone who is raised as a girl in this country and writing creative nonfiction, Body Work should not be as revelatory as it is. Yet what I see is that you're shaping an entire generation of nonfiction writers, many of them women. So, you know, also very grateful for that. And you've talked about that in Body Work. You've said "the risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery to place our flawed selves in the context of this magnificent broken world is the opposite of narcissism, which is building a self-image that pleases you." So we'll talk more in a bit about courage and vulnerability and how you all do the impossible things you do, but let's dive into your lit friendship.   Melissa: Thank you, Annie, for that beautiful introduction.   Donika: Yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to talk about our friendship.   Lito: We're so excited to have you here.   Melissa: Talk about our special friendship.   Annie: Very special friendship. Friendship with benefits.   Lito: So tell us about your lit friend, Melissa, tell us about Donika.   Melissa: (09:07) Tell us about her. Okay, she's fucking hilarious, like very, very funny and covers a broad spectrum of humor from like, there's a lot of like punning that goes on in our house, a lot of like silly wordplay, bathroom humor, and then like high level, like, literary academic sort of witticism that's also making fun of itself a lot. And we've sort of operated in all of those registers since like the day we met.   She is my favorite poet. There's like those artists that whose work you really appreciate, right? Sometimes because it's so different from your own. And then there are those artists whose work registers in like a very deep sort of recognition where they feel like creative kin, right? And that has always been my experience of Donika's work. That there is a kind of creative intelligence and emotionality that just feels like so profoundly familiar to me and was before I knew anything about her as a human being.   Okay, we also like almost all the same candy and have extremely opposite work habits. She's very hot. She only likes to watch like TVs and movies that she's seen many times before, which is both like very comforting and very annoying.   Lito: Well, I'm gonna have to follow that up now. What are some of the top hits?   Melissa: Oh, for sure, Golden Girls is at the very top. I mean…   Annie: No one's mad at that.   Lito: We can do the interview right now. Perfect. All we need to know. A++!   Melissa: She's probably like 50% of the time that she's sleeping, she falls asleep to the soundtrack of the Golden Girls or Xena, maybe. But we've also watched the more recent James Bond franchise, The Matrices, (11:00) and Mission Impossible, never franchises I ever thought I would watch once, let alone multiple times at some point.   Annie: I mean, Donika, your queerness is showing with that list.   Lito: Yeah.   Donika: I feel seen. I feel represented accurately by that list. She's not wrong. She's not wrong at all. But I've also introduced to her the pleasure of revisiting work.   Melissa: That's right.   Donika: And that was not a thing that Melissa was doing before we met, which feels confusing to me. Because I am a person who really likes to revisit. She was buying more books when we met, and now she uses the library more, and that feels like really exciting. That feels like a triumph on my part. I'm like…   Annie: That is a victory. Yeah.   Donika: …with the public services.   Melissa; Both of these examples really allude to like this deep, fundamental sort of capitalistic set of habits that I have, where I… like there's like this weird implicit desire to try to read as many books as possible before I perish, and also to hoard them, I guess. And I'm very happy to have been influenced out of that.   Annie: Well it's hard not to think—I think about that tweet like once a week that's like you have an imaginary bookshelf, and there are a limited amount of books on that you can read before you die, and that like troubles me every day.   Melissa: Yeah it's so fucked up. (12:22) I don't want that. It's already in my head. I feel like I was born with that in my head, and I'm trying to get free.   Lito: Same. Serious book FOMO, like…   Donika: There are so many books y'all.   Lito: I know. It's not possible.   Donika: And, it's like, there are more and more every year.   Annie: Well, uh Donika tell us about Melissa.   Donika: Oh Melissa As she has already explained we have a lot of fun It's a funny household. She's hilarious. Um, and also she's a writer of great integrity, which you know I'm sitting on the couch reading Nora Roberts, and she's like in her office hammering away at essays, and I don't know what's going on in there. I'm very nosy. I'm a deeply nosy person. Like, I just I want to know like what's going on. I want to know the whole history, and it's really amazing to be with someone who is like here it is.   Annie: How did you all meet?   Donika: (13:20) mere moments after Trump was elected in 2016. I was in great despair. I was living in Western New York. I was teaching at a small Catholic university. Western New York is very conservative. It's very red. And I was in this place and I was like, this place is not my place. This place is not for me. And I was feeling very alone. And Melissa had written an essay that came out shortly after about teaching creative writing at a private institution in a red county. And I was like, oh, she gets it, she understands.   I started, I just like looked for everything. I looked for like everything that she had written. I read it, I watched the TED talk. I don't know if y'all know about the TED talk. There was a TED talk. I watched the TED talk. I was like, she's cute. I read Whip Smart. I followed her on Twitter. I developed a crush, and I did nothing else. So this is where I pass the baton. So I did all of that.   Melissa: I loved Bestiaries, and I love the cover. The cover of her book is from this medieval bestiary. And so I just bought it, and I read it. And I just had that experience that I described before where I was just like, "Oh, fuck. Like this writer and I have something very deep in common." And I wrote her. I DMed her on Twitter.   Sometimes I obscure this part of the story because I want it to appear like I sent her a letter by raven or something. But actually, I slid into her DMs, and I just was like, "hey, I loved your book. If you ever come to New York and want help setting up a reading, like I curate lots of events, da da da." And I put my email in. And not five minutes later, refreshed my Gmail inbox, and there was an email from Donika, and…   Donika: I was like, "Hi. Hello. It's me."   Annie: So you agree with this timeline, Donika, right? Like, it was within five minutes.   Donika: Yeah, it was very fast. And I think if I hadn't read everything that I could get my hands on that Melissa had written, I may have been a little bit slower off the mark. It wasn't romantic. Like the connection, I wasn't like, oh, this is someone who like I want to (15:41) strike up a romantic relationship with, it really was the work. Like I just respected the work so much.   I mean, I did have a crush, like that was real, but I have crushes on lots of people, like that sort of flows in and out, but that often is a signifier of like, oh, this person will be my friend. And I was still married at the time and trying to figure out, like that relationship was ending. It was coming to a quick close that felt slow. Like it was dragging a little bit for lots of reasons.   But then once it was clear to me that I was getting divorced, Melissa and I continued writing to each other like for the next few months. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, I'm getting divorced. I was like, I'm getting divorced. And then suddenly the emails were very different. From both of us. It wasn't different.   Melissa: There had been no romantic strategy or intent, you know, and I think which, which was a really great way to, we really started from a friendship.   Annie: And sounds like a courtship really. I mean, it kind of is an old fashion.   Melissa: Yeah, in some way, it became that. I think it became that. But I think it was, I mean, the best kind of courtship begins as a, as a friendly courtship, you know what I mean? Where it was about sort of mutual artistic respect and curiosity and just interest. And it wasn't defined yet, like, what sort of mood that interest would take for a while, you know?   Lito: So how do you seduce each other on and off the page?   Donika: That's a great question.   Melissa: That is a great question.   Donika: I am not good at seduction. So that is not a skill set that is available to me. It has never been available.   Lito: I do not believe that.   Annie: I know. I'm also in disbelief out here, really.   Melissa: No one believes it, but she insists.   Annie: I feel like that's part of the game, is my feeling, but it is not.   Melissa: It's not. Here's the thing I will say is that like Donika, I've thought a lot about this and we've talked a lot about this because I balked at that statement as well. It's like Donika is seductive. Like there are qualities about her that are very seductive, but she does not seduce people. You know what I mean? Like she doesn't like turn on the charisma and shine it at you like a hypnotist. Like that's not… (18:08) that's not her form of seduction, but I will say…   I can answer that question in terms of like, I think in terms of the work, since we've been talking about that, like in a literary way, both in her own work, like the quality, like just someone who's really good at what they do is fucking sexy, you know? Like when I was looking for like a little passage before this interview, I was just like, "ah, this is so good." Like it's so attractive when someone is really, really good at their craft. right? Especially when it's a crop that you share.   Donika: So Melissa does have the ability to turn on what she has written about, which I think is really funny. Like she like she has like, she has a very strong gaze. It's very potent. And one of my gifts is to disrupt that and be like, what are you doing with your eyes? And so like, when I think about that in the work, when I'm reading her work, and I'm in like its deepest thrall, it is that intensity of focus that really like pulls me in and keeps me in. She's so good at making a grand statement.   Melissa: I was just gonna bring that up.   Donika: Oh, I think she and I like often get to, we arrive at sort of similar places, but she gets there from the grand statement, and I get there from the granular statement, like it's a very narrow sort of path. And then Melissa's like, "every love is a destroyer." I was like, whoa, every one? And there's something really compelling about that mode of— because it's earnest, and it's backed up by the work that she's written. I would never think to say that.   Melissa: I have a question for you, lit friend. Do you think you would be less into me if I weren't? Because I think for a nonfiction writer, I'm pretty obsessed with sentences. It's writing sentences that makes, that's the thing I love most about writing. It's like where the pleasure is for me. So I'm a pretty poetically inclined nonfiction writer. If I were less so, do you think that would be less seductive to you as a reader or a lit friend?   Donika: I mean, that's like asking me to imagine like, "so, what if… (20:30) water wasn't wet?" I just like, I can't like, I can't imagine. I do think the pleasure of the sentence is so intrinsic to like, I think there's something in the, in your impulse at the sentence level. That means that you're just careful. You're not rushing. You're not rushing us through an experience or keeping us in there and focused. And it's just it's tricky to imagine, or almost impossible to imagine what your work would look like if that weren't the impulse.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's an essential part of your style in some ways, that you're taking that time.   Melissa: Mm-hmm.    Annie: And how you see the world. Like I don't even think you would get to those big revelations Donika's talking about without it.   Melissa: Yeah. Right. I don't, yeah, I don't think I would either. We'll be right back.   Lito (21:19) Hey Lit Fam, Lit Friends is taking a break for the holiday. We hope you'll join us for our next episode with our guests, Ian Lee and Edmund White on January 16th. Till then, may your holiday be lit, your presents be numerous, and your 2024 be filled with joy and peace. If you'd like to show us some love, please take a moment now to follow, subscribe, rate, and review the LitFriends Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few moments of your time will help us so much. Big hugs to you and yours. Thank you for listening. And thank you for making season one a big success!   Annie: (22:05) Welcome back.   Lito: I've noticed that both of you, you know, you have your genres that you work in, but within that you're experimenting a lot with form and structure. Does anything of that come from being queer? I guess it's a question about queering forms of literature, and what that has to do also with the kinds of friendships that queer people have, and if that's different, maybe. So I guess I'm asking to connect form with queerness and friendship.   Melissa: That's a beautiful question. I think, and I'm starting with thinking about my relationship to form, which has been one of inheriting some scripts for forms. This is what an essay should look like. This is what plot structure looks like. This is how you construct a narrative. And sort of taking those for granted a little bit, and then pretty early on, understanding the limitations of those structures and the ways that they require that I contort myself and my content such that it feels like a perversion or betrayal of sort of what I'm dealing with, right? And so the way I characterize my trajectory, the trajectory of my relationship to form has been sort of becoming conscious of those inherited forms, and then pushing the boundaries of them and modifying them and distorting them and adding things to them and figuring out, letting my work sort of teach me what form it rests most easily in and is most transparent in. And I suspect that my relationship to friendship and particularly queer friendship mimics that.   Donika: Yeah, that sounds right to me. And I'm reminded of Denise Levertov has this essay titled "On the Function of the Line." And in it, she presents an argument that closed forms, received forms, are based on a kind of assumption of resolution, and that free verse or open design, like in a poem, it shows evidence of the speaker's thinking.   (24:24) Right? So that where the line breaks, the speaker is pausing, right? To gather their thoughts or like a turn might happen that's unexpected that mimics the turns in thinking. And I really love that essay. Like that essay is one of my favorites. So when I think about my approach to form, I'm like, what is the shape that this poem is asking for? What is the shape that will do, that will help the poem do its best work? And not even like to be good, but just like to be true.   I really love the sonnet shape. Like it's one of my favorite shapes. And it's so interesting and exciting to use a shape that is based on like argumentative structure or a sense of resolution, to explore. Like to use that as an exploratory space, it feels like queering our, like my expectations of what the sonnet does. Like there's something about the box. If I bounce around inside that box, there's gonna be something that comes out of that, that I wouldn't necessarily have gotten otherwise, but it's not resolution. Like the point is not resolution.   And when I think about my relationships and my chosen family, in particular, and to some degree actually my given family, part of what I'm thinking about is how can I show up and care and what does care look like in this relationship and how can I make room to be cared for? And that's so hard, like being cared for is so much more alien to me than, like, as a concept, like I feel like very anxious about it. I'm like, "am I asking for too much?" And like over and over again, my chosen family is like, "no, it's not too much. Like we, we got each other."   Melissa: I think particularly for queer people, we understand that it doesn't preclude romance or healthy kinds of dependency or unhealthy kinds of dependency, you know, that all of the things that happen in a very deep love relationship happen inside of friendship, where I think sort of like straight people and dominant culture have been like, "oh, no, like friendship isn't the site of like great romance or painful divorce or abuse." And queer people understand that all of those things happen within relationships that we call friendships.   Annie: (26:46) Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing you both talk about kind of queer survival and joy and even, Donika, what you were saying about having to adjust to being cared for as a kind of, you know, that's a sort of, to me, it's a sort of like a survivor's stance in the world. One of the things that I love about my kinship with Lito as, you know, my queer lit friend and, you know, brother from another mother is that he holds that space for me and I, you know, vice versa.   Even thinking about vulnerability, I think you both wield vulnerability as a tool of subversion too, right? And again, Lito and I are both creating projects right now that require a kind of rawness on the page. I'm about to publish a memoir called Sex with a Brain Injury, so I'm very consciously thinking about how we define vulnerability, what kind of work it does to reshape consciousness in the collective. And the ways that you each write about trauma helps us understand it as an act of reclamation, you know, power rather than powerlessness. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what is or what can be transformative about the confessional and maybe even more to the point, what does your lit friend teach you about vulnerability?   Melissa: (28:06) Oh, God, what doesn't she teach me about vulnerability? It's interesting because like you're correct that vulnerability is like very central to my work and to the like lifelong project of my work, and also like there's literally nothing on earth I would like to avoid more. And I don't think that is visible in my work, right? Because my work is the product of counteracting that set of instincts, which I must do to survive because the part of me that wants to avoid vulnerability, its end point is like literally death for me.   It is writing for me often starts from like kind of a pragmatic practice. I don't start like feeling my feelings. I write to get to my feelings and sometimes that doesn't happen until like after a book is published sometimes. You know like it's really interesting lately I've been confronting some feelings in like a really deep way that I think I have gotten access to from writing Girlhood, which came out in 2021. And it's like I had to sort of lay it all out, understand what happened, redefine my role in it and everyone else's. And I definitely had feelings while I was writing it. But like the feelings that Donika refers to as the big boss, like the deepest feelings about it. Like I, I feel like I'm only really getting. to it now.   My relationship to vulnerability, it's just like, it's a longitudinal process, you know? And there's no one who's taught me about that and how to be sort of like gentle and patient within that and to show up for it than Donika.   And I'm just thinking of like, you know, starting from pretty early in our relationship, she was working on the poems in The Renunciations, and over the years of our early, the early years of our relationship, she was confronting some childhood, some really profound childhood trauma. And she was doing that in therapy. And then there were like pieces of that work that she had to do in the poems. And I just watched her not force it. And when it was time, she like created the space to do the work. And like, I wasn't (30:35) there for that. I don't think anyone else really could have been there for that. And just like showing up for that work.   And then like the long tail of like publishing a book and having conversations with people and the way that it changes one's relationship and like the act of the vulnerability—achieved feels like the wrong word—but the vulnerability like expressed or found in the writing process, how that is just like a series of doorways and a hallway that maybe it never terminates. Maybe it doesn't even turn into death. I don't know. You know, but I've just seen her show up for that process with like a patience and a tenderness for herself at every age that I find incredibly challenging. And it's been super instructive for me.   Donika: Ooh. I, I'm, it makes me really happy to know that's your experience of like being like in like shared artistic space together. I think I go to poetry to understand, to help myself understand what it is that I'm holding and what it is that I wanna put down. Like that's what the poems are for. You know, like the act of writing helps me sort out what I need and what I wanna put down because narrative is so powerful. It feels like the one place where I can say things that are really hard, often because I've already said them in therapy.   Right? So then it's like, I can then explore what having said those hard things means in my life or how it sits in my life. And what Melissa shows me is that one can revise. I know I've said this like a few times, but that one can have a narrative. Like I think about reading Whipsmart and the story that she has about herself as a child in Whipsmart, and then how that begins to change a bit in Abandon Me. And then in Girlhood, it's really disrupted. And there is so much more tenderness there, I think. It looks really hard. Like, honestly, that joint looks hard because I might be in a poem, but I'm in it for like, like we're in it, like if I were to read it out loud for like a minute and a half.   Melissa: (33:50) It's interesting hearing you talk. I wonder if this is true. I think I'm hearing that it is true. And I think that's where it's with my experience that you often get to the feelings like in therapy or wherever, and then write the poems as more of a sort of emotional, but like also cognitive and kind of systemic and like a way of like making sense of it or putting it in context. And I think very much I, there'll be like deeply submerged feelings that emerge only as like impulses or something, you know, but I experience writing— I don't that often feel intense emotion while I'm writing. I think it's why that is writing is almost always the first place that I encounter my own vulnerability or that I say the like unspeakable thing or the thing that I have been unable to say. I often write it and then I can talk to my therapist about it or then I can talk to Donika about it.   And I think I can't. I'm too afraid or it feels like too much to feel the feelings while I'm writing. So I sort of experience it as a cognitive or like intellectual and creative exercise. And then once I understand it, sometime in the next five years, I feel the feelings.   Annie: Do you feel like it's a kind of talking to yourself or like talking outside of the world? Like what is it in that space that does that for you?   Melissa: Yeah, I do. I mean, it's like. Talking outside the world makes more sense to me than talking to myself. I mean, it is talking to myself, right? It's a conversation with myself, but it's removed from the context of me in my daily life. That's why it's possible. Within my daily life, I'm too connected to other people and my own internal pressures and just like the busy, superficial part of me that's like driving a lot of my days. I have to get away from her in order to do that work.   And so the writing really happens in a kind of separate space and feels like it is not, it has a kind of privacy that I don't experience in any other way in my life, where I really have built or found a space where I am never thinking about what other people think of me, and I'm not imagining a skeptical reader. (35:18) It is really like this weird spiritual, emotional, creative, intellectual space that is just separate from all of that, where I can sort of think and be curious freely.   And I think I created that space or found it really early on because I was, even as a kid, I was a person who was like so concerned with the people around me, with the adults around me, with what performances were expected of me. And being a person who was like very deeply thinking and feeling, I was like, well, there's no room for that here. So I need to like find somewhere else to do it. And so I think writing became that for me way before I thought about being a writer.   Lito: That's so fascinating to me. I think that's so different than how I work or Donika works or a lot of people I know. We'll be right back.   Lito: (36:26) Back to the show.   So this question is for both of you really, but it just makes me wonder then like, what is the role for emotion, but in particular anger? How does that like, when things get us angry, sometimes that motivates us to do something, right? So if you're not being inspired by an emotion to write, you're writing and then finding it, how does anger work as not only a tool for survival, but maybe a path towards personhood and freedom?   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking, I can't write out of that space, the space of anger. It took me a long time to get in touch with anger as a feeling. That took a really long time because in my family, in my given family, the way that people expressed anger was so dangerous that I felt that I didn't want to occupy those spaces. I didn't want to move emotionally into that, into that space if that was what it looked like. And it took me a long time to figure out how to be angry. And I'm still not sure that I'm great at it. Because I think often I'm moving quickly to like what's under that feeling. And often what's under my feelings of being angry, often, not always, is being hurt, feeling hurt. And I can… write into exploring what that hurt is, because I know how to do that with some tenderness and some care.   Melissa: I feel similarly, which is interesting, because we've never talked about this, I don't think. But anger is also a feeling that I think, for very different reasons, when I was growing up… I mean, I think just like baseline being socialized as a girl dissuaded me from expressing anger or even from feeling it, because where would that go?   But I also think in the particular environment that I was in, I understood pretty early that my expressions of anger would be like highly injurious to the people around me and that it would be better if I found another way to express those things. I think my compulsive inclinations have been really useful in that way. And it's taken me a lot of my adult life to sort of… (38:44) take my anger or as Donika said, you know, like anger for me almost always factors down to something that is largely powerlessness, you know, to sort of not take the terror and fury of powerlessness and express it through like ultimately self harming means.   Writing can be a way for me to arrive at like justifiable anger and to sort of feel that and let that move through me or to be like, oh, that was unjust. I was powerless in that situation. You know? Yeah, it has helped me in that way. But like, if I'm really being honest, I think I exhaust myself with exercise. And that's how I mostly deal with my feelings of anger.   Annie: Girl.   Melissa: Yeah, there's also a way I will say that like, I do think it actually comes out in my work in some ways. Like there is like a very direct, not people-pleasing vibe and tone in my work that is genuine, but that I almost never have in my life. Like maybe a little bit as a professor, but like    When Donika met me, she was like, "Oh… like you're just like this little gremlin puppy person. You're not like this intense convicted former dominatrix." You know, which is, I express it in my writing because it is a space where I'm not worried about placating or pleasing really. It's a space where I'm, I am almost solely interested in what I actually think.   Donika: I was just thinking about like the beginning of, I think it's "Wild America," when you talk about like not cleaning your room, Melissa. Because you didn't, like when you were a kid, right? It was like you cleaned your room when you wanted to appear good, but that didn't matter to you when you were alone in your room. Like you could get lost in a book or you could, you know, like just be inside yourself alone when you were alone in your room. And that's one of my favorite passages that you read. Like I'm always sort of like mouthing along, like it's a song.   Melissa: (40:57) I'm just interested and I really love the sort of conception of like a girl's room as a potential space that sort of maps on to the way I described the writing space where it's just like a space where other, where the gaze of others, or the gaze that we're taught to please like can be kept out to some extent. And just like, you know, that isn't true, obviously for like lots and lots and lots of girls, but just that there is an impetus for us to create or invent or designate a space where that is true.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's what she's up to in "A Room of One's Own."   Annie: It makes me think of like girls' rooms as like kind of also these reductive spaces, like they all have to have pink or whatever, but then you like carve out a secret space for yourself in that room, which I think is what you're talking about with your writing.   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking about what happens when you don't have a room like that, cause I didn't, like I absolutely did not have a room that was… inviolable in some way or that like really felt like I could close the door. But writing became a place where that work could happen and where those explorations could happen and where I could do whatever I want and I had control over so many aspects of the work. And I hesitated because I was saying I didn't have that much control over the content.   Like I might think, oh, I'm gonna write a poem about this or a poem about that. And as is true with most writing, the poems are so much smarter and reveal so much more than I might have intended, but I could like shape the box. There are just like so many places to have control in a poem, like there's so many mechanisms to consider where like when Melissa was first sharing like early work with me, I would get so nervous because I would wanna move a comma.   Because in a poem, like that's a big deal, moving somebody's commas around, changing the punctuation. And she was like, "it doesn't matter."   Melissa: I would get nervous because she would be like, "well, I just have one note, but it's like, kind of big." And I would be like, "oh, fuck, I failed." And she would be like,    Donika: "What's going on with these semicolons?"   Melissa: She'd be like, "I just, these semicolons."   Annie: You know, hearing you both talk about (43:20) how you show up for one another as readers, right? In addition to like romantic partners. I mean, we do have the sense, and this can be true of all marriages, queer or otherwise, where like we as readers have a pretty superficial understanding of what you kind of each bring to the table or how you create this protective space or really see one another. I imagine that you've saved yourselves, but I'm curious about to what extent this relationship may have also been a way to save you or subvert relationships that have come before. And yet at the same time, we've asked this question of other lit friends too, which is, you know, what about competition between lit friends? And what does that look like in a marriage? What is a good day versus a bad day?   Donika: I mean, we could be here for years talking about that first question. And so I'm gonna turn to the second part to talk about competition, which is much easier to handle.   I feel genuinely and earnestly so excited at the recognition that Melissa has received. Part of what was really exciting for me about the beginning of our relationship that continues to be exciting is that, is getting to watch someone be truly mid-career and navigate that with integrity. It feels like such a good model, for how to be a writer.   I mean, she's much more forward-facing than I would ever want to be. But I think in terms of just thinking about like, what is the work? How, like, where is the integrity? Like, it's just, it's always so, so forward and it feels really grounding for me and us in the house, so it's always big cheers in here. It helps that we write in different genres. I think that's super helpful.   Melissa: I think it's absolutely key. Yeah.   Donika: It's not, I mean, I think, and that we have very different measures of ambition. I think those two things together are really, really helpful.   But I've read everything that Melissa has written, I think. (45:38) There might be like a few little, I mean, I've read short story, like that short, there was like a short story from like shortly, I think after you, like before you were in your MFA program, maybe.   Melissa: Oh my God. What short story?   Donika: I can't, I'll find it. And show it to you later.   Melissa: Is it about that little plant?   Donika: No, no, it might've been an essay. I'm not sure.   Annie: I love this. This is sort of hot breaking news on LitFriends.   Donika: It's like, I've just like, I did a deep Google dive. I was like, I want to read everything and it's, it feels really exciting.   Melissa: You know, I've dated writers before, and it was a different situation. And I think even if I hadn't, even before I ever did, I thought, that seems unlikely to work. Because even though there are lots of like obvious ways that it could be great, the competition just seemed like such a poison dart that it would be really hard to avoid because writers are competitive, and I'm competitive. And maybe it would have been harder if we were younger or something.   And certainly if we were in the same genre, I think actually, who knows? Maybe it would be possible if we were in the same genre, but it would require a little more care. Even if for some reason we would never publish again, we would keep writing. It just like it functions in our lives in similar ways. And it's like a practice that we came to, you know, I have a more hungry ambition or have historically. And I think our relationship is something that helps me keep the practice at the center because we're constantly talking about it. And I'm constantly observing Donika's relationship to her work. So it really hasn't felt very relevant. Like it's kind of shocking to me how, how little impact competition or comparing has in our relationship. It's really like not even close to one of the top notes of things that might create conflict for us, you know, and I'm so grateful for that. And so happy to have like underestimated what's possible when you have a certain level of intimacy and respect and sort of compatibility with someone.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Annie: (47:57) Welcome back. Well, then I'm wondering, you know, you both have had some like incredible successes in the last few years. And I'm wondering if conversely, you've been able to show up for one another in moments of high pressure or exposure, or, you know, having to confront the world, having been vulnerable on the page in the ways you have been.   Melissa: Donika was not planning on having a book launch for The Renunciations.   Donika: What's a book launch? Like, why do people do that?   Annie: Listen, mine's going to be a dance party, Donika. So…   Melissa: And I made, meanwhile, like when I published Abandon Me, I had a giant dance party that I had like several costume changes for during. But I remember feeling pretty confident about making a strong case multiple times for her to have a book launch for The Renunciations. And also like having a lot of respect and like tenderness watching her navigate what it meant to take work that vulnerable and figure out how to like speak for it and talk about it and like present it to the world. Parts of her would have preferred to just let the book completely speak for itself out there.    Donika: But you were right it was a good time.   Melissa: I was right.   Donika: Because like when Melissa's so when Girlhood came out it was like, that was still the time of like so many virtual events. And it was just like, I think that first week there was like something every day that week, like there was an event every day that week. And now, now like, again, I had to be talked into having a book launch. So I own this. Um, but I was like, Ooh, why, why would you do that? Oh, yeah. Four?   Melissa: This is definitely one of the ways that she and I are like diametrically opposed, and therefore I think, helpful to each other in sort of like creating a kind of tension that can be uncomfortable but is mostly good for both of us to be sort of pulled closer to the middle.   Donika: But my favorite part of that is then hearing you give advice to your friends who are very similar and be like, "whoa, you did too much. You put too many things on the calendar."     Melissa: (50:15) You know, some people would say that that's hypocrisy, but I actually think, I have a real dubious like position and thinking about hypocrisy because I am an expert in overdoing things. And so I think I speak from, I am like the voice of Christmas future. You know what I mean? I'm like, let me speak to you from the potential future that you are currently planning with your publicist. And like, it's not pretty and it doesn't feel good. And it's not, it has not delivered the feeling that you're imagining when you're scheduling all those events.   Annie: I can appreciate this. And I appreciate Donika's kind of role, this particular role in a relationship, because sometimes I just have to go see Leto and literally just lay on Lito and be like, stop me from doing anymore.   Melissa: I know, I know.   Lito: You and Sara are like super overachievers. I have to be like, "can you calm down?"   Annie: We do too much.   Lito: Way too much. What would you like to see your lit friend make or create next?   Donika: I got two answers to this. The first one is the Cape Cod lesbian mystery. I'm ready. You know, we got, I've offered so much assistance as a person who will never write prose. Um, but I got notes and ideas. The second one is, uh, a micro essay collection titled Dogs I Have Loved. Cause I think it would be a New York Times bestseller.   Lito: Oh, I love that.   Donika: I know.   Lito: Speaking of, who's the little gremlin puppy there?   Donika: Oh, yeah, that's Chuck. Chuck is a 15-year-old chihuahua. I've had him since he was a puppy.   Annie: Is Chuck like a nickname, or is that just, it's just Chuck?   Donika: It's just Chuck.   Lito: I love that.   Melissa: His nickname is Charles sometimes. One of his nicknames is Charles, but his full name is Chuck.   Melissa: OK, so I would say, I mean, my first thought at this question was like, I want Donika to keep doing exactly what she's been doing? As far as I can tell, she doesn't have a lot of other voices getting in the way of that process. My second thought is that I'm really interested. I've never heard her talk. She has no interest in writing prose of any kind. She is like deeply wedded to poetry. But I have heard her talk more recently about potential collaborations with (52:40) other artists, visual artists and other writers. And I would, I'm really excited to see what comes out of that space.   Lito: Would you all ever collaborate beyond your marriage?   Annie: I could see you all doing a craft book together.   Melissa: I feel like we could make like a chapbook that had prose and poems in it that were responding to a shared theme. I could definitely see that.   Donika: I really thought you were gonna say Love Poems for Melissa Febos, that's what you wanted to see next.   Melissa: I mean, I already know that that's on deck, so I don't... I mean, it's in, it's on the docket. It's on deck. Yeah. So…   Lito: Those sonnets, get to work on the sonnets.   Donika: Such a mess.   Melissa: This is real, you think, this is not, like, a conversation of the moment. This is…   Annie: Oh no, we can, this is history.   Donika: "Where's my century of sonnets?" she says.   Lito (53:33) What is your first memory?   Donika: Dancing?   Melissa: Donika telling me I'm pretty.   Annie (54:15.594) Who or what broke your heart first?   Melissa: Maddie, our dog.   Donika: Kerri Strug, 1996 Olympics. Vault.   Lito: Atlanta.   Donika: The Vault final. Yeah. Heartbreaking.   Lito: Who would you want to be lit friends with from any time in history, living or dead?   Donika: I just thought Gwendolyn Brooks. I'm gonna go with that.   Lito: I love Gwendolyn Brooks.   Donika: Oh yeah.   Melissa: My first thought is Baldwin.   Donika: It's a great party. We're at a great party.   Melissa: I just feel like I would be like, "No, James!" all the time.   Melissa: (54:30) Or like Truman Capote.   Lito: It'd be wild.   Donika: Messy. So messy.   Annie: What's your favorite piece of music?   Melissa: Oh my god, these questions are crazy! "Hallelujah"?   Donika: Oh god, there's an aria from Diana Damraus' first CD. She's a Soprano. And it's a Mozart aria, and I don't know where it's from, and I can't tell you the name because it's in Italian and I don't speak Italian, but that joint is exceptional. So that's what I'm gonna go with. Oh God, just crying in the car.   Lito: If you could give any gift to your lit friend without limitations, what would you give them?   Donika: Just like gold chains. So many gold chains. Yeah! If I could have a gold chain budget, it'd be a lot.   Annie: (55:23) Donika, we can do this.   Lito: Achievable.   Donika: I mean, yeah. Yeah.   Lito: Bling budget.   Donika: That's the first thing I thought.   Annie: Love it.   Donika: Just like gold, just thin gold chains, thick gold chains.   Melissa: I'm going to go with that, then, and say an infinite sneaker budget.   Lito: Yes. Oh, I want a shoe room. (55:50) That'd be awesome.   Melissa: We need two shoe rooms in this house, or like one. Or we just need to have a whole living room that's just for shoes.   Donika: I just like there's just like one closet that's just like for shoes. Like that's what we need.   Lito: That's great.   Donika: Yeah, but it's actually a room. Yes. With like a sorting system, it's like computer coded.   Annie: Soft lighting. That's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Lito: We'll be back next week with our guests Yiyun Li and Edmund White.   Annie: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendsPodcast.   Lito: Don't forget to reach out and tell us about the love affair of you and your LitFriend.   Annie: I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velázquez. Thank you to our production squad. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton.   Annie: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Lito: Lizette Saldana is our marketing director.   Annie: Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca.   Lito: And special thanks to our show producer, Toula Nuñez.   Annie: This was LitFriends, Episode Three.    

Evie Shockley joins Kevin Young to read “Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove,” by Rita Dove, and her own poem “the blessings.” Shockley is the author of six poetry collections and the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University. Her honors include the 2023 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Lannan Literary Award, the Stephen Henderson Award, and, twice, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry.

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 364, my conversation with Mat Johnson, author of the novel Invisible Things and other books. Johnson is a Philip H. Knight Chair of the Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications include the novels Loving Day and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel Incognegro. Johnson is the recipient of the American Book Award, the United States Artists James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. His most recent novel, Invisible Things, was published in 2022 and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it. Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy's poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. Interviewer Nikesha Elise Williams is a two-time Emmy award winning producer, an award-winning author, and producer and host of the Black & Published podcast. Her latest novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree was acquired by Scout Press and will be published in 2025. A Chicago native, Nikesha is a columnist with JAX Today. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, ESSENCE, and VOX. She lives in Florida with her family. READ Check out Camille's work from the library: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=camille+dungy&te= --- Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates  Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: jplpromotions@coj.net 

Percival Everett (winner of a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction) joins Windham-Campbell Prize administrator Michael Kelleher for the last interview of the season, and it's a joyful exploration of Ralph Ellison's seminal novel Invisible Man, Everett's relationship to the book and its contemporaries, and the enduring power of a novel that makes you think. Reading list:  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison • Moby Dick by Herman Melville • "Box Seat" by Jean Toomer • If He Hollers, Let Him Go by Chester Himes • Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes • Native Son by Richard Wright • "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue" by Louis Armstrong • The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler • Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs Percival Everett's most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award) The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has a poetry collection forthcoming with Red Hen Press. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

This week on The Maris Review, Maris talks with Jamel Brinkley about Witness, his new short story collection, out now from FSG. Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He was raised in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, New York, and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His new story collection is called Witness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jamel Brinkley is the author of the story collection Witness, available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He has also been awarded an O. Henry Prize, the Rome Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. He was raised in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, New York, and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. *** A SPECIAL OFFER for Otherppl listeners! Use the offer code SUMMERSCHOOL and get 10% off of all summer writing workshops at https://www.chillsubs.com/writeordie/education *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jamel Brinkley is the author of a new short story collection called Witness and previously published the short story collection  A Lucky Man which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Guernica, Glimmer Train,The Best American Short Stories, and many more. He was raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and now teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.We talk to Jamel about his upcoming collection, Witness, and about what attracts him to short stories as a form. Hosted by Phillip Russell and Ben ThorpYou can learn more about Jamel Brinkley here.Visit our website: Originstory.showFollow us on Twitter @originstory_Do you have feedback or questions for us? Email us theoriginstorypod@gmail.comCover art and website design by Melody HirschOrigin Story original score by Ryan Hopper

We talked with:Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of "Wench," "Balm," and most recently "Take My Hand." In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. Dolen is the current chair of the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She is currently associate professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, D.C., with her family.Swapna Reddy, J.D., DrPH, M.P.H., is a clinical associate professor at Arizona State University's College of Health Solutions. At Arizona State University, Dr. Reddy teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework — including as faculty at Arizona State University's Barrett, the Honors College in Medical Studies. Additionally, she is an adjunct assistant professor in Health Care Administration at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Reddy also was named a Fulbright Specialist.We talked about:In this episode, Dr. Millstine and her guests discuss:Historical fiction that's not that historical … or fictitious. "We're still living many of the issues that are being discussed in this book," Dr. Reddy says. Women and girls are still fighting for the right to control their own reproductive choices — whether that's to reproduce or not to reproduce.The need to feel heard. There are too many anecdotes about women not being heard in the doctor's office. You may know Serena William's story of repeatedly asking doctors to take her risk of blood clots seriously after giving birth, but you probably know someone much closer to you who's experienced the same thing.The road to hell … How could so many people allow the forced sterilization of women to happen in the U.S.? In Dolen's book (as in life) good intentions aren't a barrier to doing real harm. We talk about the need to examine our own culpability in harmful systems.Can't get enough?Purchase "Take My Hand."From Bookshop.orgFrom AmazonFrom Barnes & NobleWant to read more on the topic? Check out our blog:Racism, accelerated aging and the biases of health careAsk the Gynecologist: Is abortion illegal?Beyond contraception: Other uses for birth control Got feedback?If you've got ideas or book suggestions, email us at readtalkgrow@mayo.edu. We invite you to complete the following survey as part of a research study at Mayo Clinic. Your responses are anonymous. Your participation in this survey as well as its completion are voluntary.

Dr. Rita Woods won the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction last year for her novel "Remembrance." NPR called the book "A complex story of loss and survival told across 200 years by four women, united by the color of their skin." Dr. Woods is coming to Storyfort in downtown Boise this week. She talked earlier with host Gemma Gaudette.

On April 11, 2023, The Lannan Center hosted a reading and talk featuring poets Camille T. Dungy and Major Jackson.Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy's poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry: Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems; The Absurd Man; Roll Deep; Holding Company; Hoops; and Leaving Saturn, which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry. He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry in 2019. Jackson is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Elizabeth Nunez emigrated from Trinidad to the US at age 19. Winner of an American Book Award, an Independent Publishers Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, and a Hurston Wright Legacy Award, she is the author of a memoir and ten novels, four of which were selected as New York Times Editors Choice. She is the co-founder with John Oliver Killens of the National Black Writers Conference and executive producer of the series Black Writers in America. She has served on the jury for national and international literary prizes/awards, and is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. She has one son, age 46, and two granddaughters ages 15 and 22, and describes writer-motherhood in 3 words as: "life-affirming essential."A few notes! The official Writer Mother Monster shop has everything from t-shirts and tea towels to onesies and undies so you can support the show in style! And this Mother's Day, May 14, treat yourself to a writing class with me, your host and the author of the story collection Animal Wife. We'll talk about writer-motherhood, share strategies for prioritizing our craft, and write. You'll leave the workshop armed with a plan for recommitting to your creative work. Finally, a special thanks to our sponsors and patrons listed on the Writer Mother Monster website. Your support helps make this show possible. If you enjoy this episode, please become a patron/ess to help keep this podcast going. For details on the store, class, and sponsorship, visit writermothermonster.comSupport the showIf you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you'd like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM's sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

This week on Black and Published, Nikesha speaks with Ladee Hubbard, author of the short story collection, The Last Suspicious Holdout. Ladee is also the author of the novels The Talented Ribkins which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and The Rib King. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Guernica, Virginia Quarterly and Callaloo among other venues.  Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, She currently lives in New Orleans. In our conversation, Ladee discusses why she felt the need to pursue an MFA after already earning a Ph.D. and having children. Plus, how Hurricane Katrina inspired her need to share her writing and be in community with other storytellers. She also details how the cynicism and suspicion after President Obama's historic election in 2008 was the fuel for the fire needed to produce this short story collection.Support the showFollow the Show: IG: @blkandpublished Twitter: @BLKandPublished Follow Me:IG: @nikesha_elise Twitter: @Nikesha_Elise Get My Books

Jordan talks with Asali Solomon about The Days of Afrekete, the unexpected discovery that she's a funny writer, and trying to impart wisdom to students while she's still learning too.  MENTIONED: Get a Life (1990-1992) The Simple Stories by Langston Hughes The Book of Night Women by Marlon James An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken Asali Solomon's first novel, Disgruntled, was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Denver Post. Her debut story collection, Get Down, earned her a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” honor, and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Vibe, Essence, The Paris Review Daily, McSweeney's, and several anthologies, and on NPR. Solomon teaches fiction writing and literature of the African diaspora at Haverford College. She was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, November 15, 2022, the Lannan Center hosted a reading and conversation with writer Laila Lalami and moderated by Aminatta Forna. Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of five books, most recently, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, which was shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Her other books include, The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Brief summary of episode:D Watkins is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised and We Speak for Ourselves, which was a One Book, one Baltimore selection. He is Editor at Large for Salon. He is featured in the HBO documentary The Slow Hustle and is a writer on We Own the City, an HBO miniseries from David Simon. Watkins work has been published in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He is a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore and holds a Master's in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. Watkins' awards include the BMe Genius Grant for dynamic Black leaders, the City Lit Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts, the Maryland Library Association's William Wilson Maryland Author Award, and the Ford's Men of Courage award for Black male storytellers. He was also a finalist for a 2016 Hurston Wright Legacy Award and The Cook Up was a 2017 Books for a Better Life finalist. He is lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife and daughter.The Truth In This ArtThe Truth In This Art is a podcast interview series supporting vibrancy and development of Baltimore & beyond's arts and culture. Mentioned in this episode:D Watkins' website To find more amazing stories from the artist and entrepreneurial scenes in & around Baltimore, check out my episode directory. Stay in TouchNewsletter sign-upSupport my podcastShareable link to episode ★ Support this podcast ★

Ladee Hubbard is the author of The Rib King and The Talented Ribkins, which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Times Literary Supplement, Copper Nickel and Callaloo. Hubbard is a recipient of a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. She has also received fellowships from MacDowell, Art Omi, the Sacatar Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, Ladee Hubbard currently lives in New Orleans.

Stand Up is a daily podcast that I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 800 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised and We Speak for Ourselves, which was a One Book, one Baltimore selection. He is Editor at Large for Salon. He is featured in the HBO documentary The Slow Hustle and is a writer on We Own the City, an HBO miniseries from David Simon.  Follow D.Watkins on Twitter  Watkins work has been published in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He is a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore and holds a Master's in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. Watkins' awards include the BMe Genius Grant for dynamic Black leaders, the City Lit Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts, the Maryland Library Association's William Wilson Maryland Author Award, and the Ford's Men of Courage award for Black male storytellers. He was also a finalist for a 2016 Hurston Wright Legacy Award and The Cook Up was a 2017 Books for a Better Life finalist. He is lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife and daughter. Bill Boyle is a well sourced and connected businessman who lives in Washington DC with his wife and son. Bill is a trusted friend and source for me who I met after he listened and became a regular and highly respected caller of my siriusxm radio show. Bill is a voracious reader and listeners love to hear his take. I think his analysis is as sharp as anyone you will hear on radio or TV and he has well placed friends across the federal government who are always talking to him. As far as I can tell he is not in the CIA. Follow him on twitter and park at his garages.   Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page

NoViolet Bulawayo is the author of the novels Glory and We Need New Names, which was recognized with the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Pen/Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, the Fred Brown Literary Award, the Betty Trask Award, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award (second place), and the National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” Fiction Selection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations (Graywolf), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary (Graywolf), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Kelly's poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and longlisted for the National Book Award.  A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. She earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the nonfiction writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing. donikakelly.com Twitter: @officialdonika “Self Portrait as a Body, a Sea” was originally published in the Sewanee Review, 2017.  Text of today's poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.  Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this second year of our series is the first movement, Schéhérazade, from Masques, Op. 34, by Karol Szymanowski, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

Laila Lalami talked about her award-winning books, The Other American, The Moor's Account, Secret Son, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits & Conditional Citizens.Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of five books, including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at RiversideCreated and hosted by Mikey Muhanna, afikra Edited by: Ramzi RammanTheme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/About the afikra Conversations:Our long-form interview series features academics, arts, ‎and media experts who are helping document and/or shape the history and culture of the Arab world through their ‎work. Our hope is that by having the guest share their expertise and story, the community still walks away with newfound curiosity - and maybe some good recommendations about new nerdy rabbit holes to dive into headfirst. ‎Following the interview, there is a moderated town-hall-style Q&A with questions coming from the live virtual audience ‎on Zoom.‎ Join the live audience: https://www.afikra.com/rsvp   FollowYoutube - Instagram (@afikra_) - Facebook - Twitter Support www.afikra.com/supportAbout afikra:‎afikra is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity. Read more about us on  afikra.com

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.· www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com · www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/· www.penfaulkner.org· www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

In Episode 111, Dolen Perkins-Valdez (author of Take My Hand) shares details about the real-life events that inspired the book about a tragic story and historical landmark in the battle for women's rights. Dolen also talks about her research methods and a couple of key themes from the book. Take My Hand was a 5-star book for me and will be one of my favorite books of 2022! This post contains affiliate links, through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!). Highlights What compelled Dolen to write this book, based on the true story of the Relf sisters. How Dolen shaped this real-life story into fiction and the liberties she allowed for her novel. Dolen's research process and a bit of the behind the scenes of crafting the book. The theme of governmental coercion and exploitation of poor people. Dolen's favorite genre of fiction as a reader. How Dolen first resisted defining herself as a Historical Fiction writer. The secret genre Dolen would like to explore one day. Dolen's Book Recommendations [24:31] Two OLD Books She Loves We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin | Amazon | Bookshop.org [26:08] The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot | Amazon | Bookshop.org [29:06] Two NEW Books She Loves The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | Amazon | Bookshop.org [32:00] Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian | Amazon | Bookshop.org [35:58] One Book She DIDN'T LOVE A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway | Amazon | Bookshop.org [40:12] One NEW RELEASE She's Excited About The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (March 29) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [41:49] Last 5-Star Book Dolen Read Miss Chloe by A. J. Verdelle (May 10) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [45:22] Other Books Mentioned Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez [1:02] Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez [1:02] Black No More by George S. Schuyler [28:19] Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora by Sheree Renée Thomas (ed.), with short story “Sister Lilith” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers [32:23] The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers [33:31] The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois [33:39] The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway [41:05] The Alice Network by Kate Quinn [42:40] Other Links Reuters | Henrietta Lacks' Heirs Sue for Cut of Medical Research Profits.  Are They Too Late? NPR | Henrietta Lacks' family sues biotech company for profiting from ‘stolen' cells About Dolen Perkins-Valdez Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing.   She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.

Join Hope Wabuke and special guests Safia Elhillo and Ladan Osman for a celebration of Wabuke's new book The Body Family. The Body Family is a song of memory and revelation; it is the sublime unearthing of what has been hidden by silence and erasure. This lyrical and imagistic poetry collection tells the story of a family's journey to flee the murderous reign of Uganda's Idi Amin only to land in a racist American landscape. Wabuke excavates personal and ancestral history to bring these poems to wrenching life, articulating what it means to be a Black girl becoming a Black woman while navigating a diaspora haunted by British colonization and American enslavement. Get The Body Family from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1872-the-body-family --------------------------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Hope Wabuke is a Ugandan American poet, essayist, and writer. She is the author of the forthcoming memoir Please Don't Kill My Black Son Please. Hope has published in The Guardian, The Root, Los Angeles Review of Books, and NPR among others. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a founding board member and former Media & Communications Director for the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2021), and a forthcoming novel in verse (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021). Co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), she is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. Ladan Osman is the author of Exiles of Eden (2019), winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony (2015), winner of the Sillerman Prize. A 2021 Whiting Award winner, she has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, Cave Canem, the Michener Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/XACbmEh1F8k Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

In conversation with Asali Solomon, author of the novels Disgruntled and Days of Afrekete Using ''gorgeous, compassionate prose'' to continue ''our national conversation about people working together to heal our communities'' (The Washington Post), Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the author of The New York Times bestselling novels Wench and Balm. She has been a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Award, and she won the 2011 First Novelist Award from Black Caucus of the American Library Association. The current chair of the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, she teaches creative writing at American University in Washington, D.C. In Take My Hand, inspired by shocking real-life events, Perkins-Valdez tells the story of Civil Townsend, a Black doctor who seeks justice for wrongs done to her patients decades before in 1970s Alabama. (recorded 4/20/2022)

Dr. Rita Woods won the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction last year for her novel "Remembrance." NPR called the book "A complex story of loss and survival told across 200 years by four women, united by the color of their skin." Dr. Woods is coming to Storyfort in downtown Boise this week. She talked earlier with host Gemma Gaudette.

Good day, bilches! We're winding down this stab at a third season with our last, luminous guest, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, with whom we discuss advisorship, allusion, and arrangement. Born and raised in Compton, California, educated at Howard University and Cornell University, AMAUD JAMAUL JOHNSON is the author of three poetry collections, Red Summer, Darktown Follies, and Imperial Liquor (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, MacDowell Fellow, and Cave Canem Fellow, his honors include the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Dorset Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The New York Times Magazine, Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Narrative Magazine, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review and elsewhere. His most recent collection was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2021 UNT Rilke Prize. NEAT GLASS OF THE MACALLAN FINE WHISKY: The Macallan Fine & Vintage Single Malt Scotch Whisky, nothing else.

Friends, lovers, bilches—this episode wraps up our pandemic season of The Poet Salon, and what an episode it is! After chopping it up with Amaud Jamaul Johnson on smoke, speakers, and silences, he brought us Linda Gregg's "The Poet Goes About Her Business." If this is your first encounter with the poem, we're excited for you but also very jealous. Born and raised in Compton, California, educated at Howard University and Cornell University, AMAUD JAMAUL JOHNSON is the author of three poetry collections, Red Summer, Darktown Follies, and Imperial Liquor (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, MacDowell Fellow, and Cave Canem Fellow, his honors include the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Dorset Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The New York Times Magazine, Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Narrative Magazine, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review and elsewhere. His most recent collection was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2021 UNT Rilke Prize. LINDA GREGG was born in New York and raised in Marin County, California. She earned both a BA and an MA from San Francisco State University. Gregg published many several collections of poetry, including All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems (2008), a Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of 2008 and winner of the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award; In the Middle Distance (2006); Things and Flesh (1999), finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry; Chosen by the Lion (1995); Sacraments of Desire (1992); Alma (1985); and Too Bright to See (1981). Gregg's lyrical poetry is often admired for its ability to discuss grief, desire, and longing with electrifying craftsmanship and poise.   

About Our GuestKentucky Poet Laureate Crystal WilkinsonCrystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2021 O. Henry Prize, a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship, and a 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Nominated for the John Dos Passos Award, the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, and others.Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky, where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.ResourcesIf you'd like to read examples that use the braided essay form, Crystal recommends "Not a Good Day for Planting Root Crops" by Marcia Aldrich. Crystal used her own prompt to write her essay, "Dig If You Will the Picture," which appeared in Oxford American and in her book Perfect Black.Listen to the podcast for the complete description of Crystal's prompt.Join the Prompt to Page Writing GroupTuesday, October 26, 6:00 PMSpend time working on this month's Prompt to Page podcast writing prompts, get feedback, and share writing tips with a community of other writers. Open to all writing levels.Registration is required.Submit Your WritingWe'd love to see what you're writing! Submit a response to the episode 2 prompt for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.

Mat Johnson was just trying to research for a new novel. Then he fell down the UFO Twitter rabbit hole. Was that enough to make him a believer? Join Chiwan Choi and his special guest Mat Johnson, author of the novels Loving Day, Pym, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a recipient of the American Book Award, the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. He's got aliens on his mind. #UFO #Paranormal #Sightings #internationalUFO #Pym 

Good ppl, good ppl—last week we chopped it up with THEE Dr. Bettina Judd on so many goodness. This week, she brought in Aracelis Girmay's "The Black Maria" for us to melt our hearts over.  Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her current book manuscript argues that Black women's creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center and the University of Maryland. Her poems and essays have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize and was released in November of 2014. As a performer she has been invited to perform for audiences within the United States and internationally. Aracelis Girmay is the author of three collections of poetry: the black maria (BOA Editions, 2016); Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and the GLCA New Writers Award, and a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Civitella Ranieri, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Girmay is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry. She teaches in Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University's low-residency MFA program in poetry.