For the smart and free-thinking, Black Market Reads is a podcast featuring conversations with today's most exciting Black literary voices. We are a podcast for any one who loves to read, write, and engage. Black Market Reads is a project of The Givens Foundation for African American Literature.
Recorded live at the Capri Theater in partnership with Stamp-Connect Join us for this Special Edition of Black Market Reads as Lissa interviews Bukata Hayes about the book he co-authored with Stacy Wells, Write on Race to be Right on Race Resource Journaling Guide followed by a panel discussion exploring the intersections of health care, …
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“In a gorgeously complex life full of challenges, it is tempting to think that struggle somehow makes us unworthy, rather than qualifying us for something greater.” In Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, author Jayne Allen shares relatable, real-life experiences of the lead character Tabitha Walker, a young professional who knows what she wants with a …
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In our 60th episode, Lissa speaks with Queen of Black Horror Tananarive Due on the re-release of her 1995 debut novel The Between (Harper Perennial, 2021). Due is a leading voice in Black speculative fiction, and teaches about Black horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA where she developed a course called “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival …
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On this episode, we hear from LaTanya McQueen about her debut novel, When the Reckoning Comes (Harper Perennial, 2021). The novel follows Mira, a young woman who travels back to the southern town where she grew up to attend the wedding of a childhood friend -- a wedding being held at a former plantation-turned-event venue. …
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Left: Cover of Resmaa's NYT Bestselling book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies; Right: Lissa and Resmaa in the studio. On this episode, Lissa sits down with Resmaa Menakem, the New York Times bestselling author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our …
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“How can I be unarmed when it is my blackness you fear," writes Carol Anderson in her latest work, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). This episode was recorded as part of a live event in anticipation of the release of Carol Anderson’s latest Book The Second: hosted by …
“I don’t know this woman, I don’t like this woman, but I understand this woman,” says author Morgan Jerkins of what she wants her readers to takeaway from reading the complex, challenging women who make up her debut novel l Caul Baby (Harper 2021). In this episode, essayist, memoirist, and, now, novelist Morgan Jerkins sits …
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In this episode, Lissa speaks with Javon Johnson, about his new poetry collection, Ain't Never Not Been Black (Button Poetry, 2020). Javon Johnson, Ph.D. is a poet, performer, professor and recipient of numerous awards. According to poet Rudy Francisco, Dr. Johnson is “is one of the most brilliant writers in the world”. This conversation was recorded …
One of the defining events of the past year, in Minnesota and around the world, was the murder of George Floyd and the international protests demanding justice. Though Mr. Floyd's murder was shocking, for many people it fit a pattern of racism and violence inflicted upon Black people and BIPOC communities in this country. In …
"Hope is the thing that drives us forward," says Dr. Yusuf Salaam of naming his novel's main character Amal, which means hope. "Because without hope we wouldn't see a positive future, we wouldn't imagine the opportunity to change the criminal justice system from the criminal system of injustice to the criminal justice system." Dr. Salaam …