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.
In the Season 5 premier, Lissa sits down with author Kalisha Buckhanon to discuss her new novel Speaking of Summer (COUNTERPOINT, 2019). This episode was recorded live at an event hosted by Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis. Kalisha Buckhanon is the author of the novels Solemn, Conception, and Upstate, which was selected as an inaugural National Book Foundation …
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Thursday Sept. 26, 7:00 pm Hey Twin Cities listeners! Black Market Reads celebrates the launch of Season 5! Join us for a live podcast recording at Magers & Quinn Bookstore (3038 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis). We hope you'll join us! Kalisha Buckhanon is the author of the novels Solemn, Conception, and Upstate, which was selected as an inaugural National …
Local literary publisher Graywolf Press is marking their 45th anniversary this year, and they’re celebrating the occasion with a Graywolf Literary Gala this Thursday, September 26th from 6:30 – 9:30 PM at Aria in Minneapolis, MN. This event will feature some of Graywolf’s biggest literary stars, including Eula Biss (On Immunity; Notes from No Man’s Land), Maggie Nelson (The Argonauts; The Red Parts), and Claudia Rankine (Citizen; The …
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On this episode, Lissa sits down with civil rights icon Josie R. Johnson and her co-authors Carolyn Holbrook and Arleta Little to discuss Johnson's memoir Hope in the Struggle: A Memoir (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). https://oembed.libsyn.com/embed?item_id=10919197 Dr. Josie R. Johnson has been an educator, activist, and public servant for more than seven decades. Along …
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In 'Scar Tissue,' the first essay in Emily Bernard's debut collection, Black is the Body, she writes the story of a violent attack that left her critically injured as a graduate student, but which also led her consider her own voice and how she would use it to speak the truth of her own history …
In "Grandma Essie's Vanilla Pound Cake," writer Debra J. Stone remembers an important moment in her childhood, and Minnesota history, when the adults in the family grappled with the news that her grandparents' home in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, along with many others, would be destroyed to make way for the I-94 corridor. This pivotal …
On the (naturally) cold evening of March 5th we had the pleasure of speaking with Ross Gay and hearing him read from his most recent work, a book of essays entitled The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis, MN. The book is the result of a challenge that …
We are so excited to have finally had the opportunity to speak with award-winning poet and Minnesota native Danez Smith. Smith, who uses the pronouns they/them/their, spoke with host Lissa Jones about their genesis as a poet (they came to poetry through performance at Central High School in Saint Paul and credits renowned educator Jan …
When asked by the author Alexs Pate in a 2009 interview whether she was conscious of a through-line in her body of work, Ntozake Shange said no. But she went on to say that her goal in all her work was to make African-American women the centers of the universe. In this episode, we look …
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you," writes Maya Angelou in her seminal work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In his award-winning debut collection, Refuse (emphasis on the first syllable, but used for its homographic ambiguity), the poet Julian Randall is beginning to tell the stories of his life, his …