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.
"We are just a stepping stone away from being back in 1964, if you think that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was gonna be it and it was gonna stop there, I would bet you a mortgage payment, you're wrong. The gist of the book is if you don't vote, then you're part of …
Continue reading "Wanda M. Morris, Anywhere You Run – a novel"
"There should be a fear of us moving towards a full blown authoritarian state. We shouldn't be under the illusion that it's never happened here and that there's no experience of people not having democratic rights. It absolutely has happened. So, how do we combat and mobilize around preventing the country from going further and …
“I will never forget the day that I walked into that courthouse and I encountered a group of young boys in the hallway chained together at their arms and legs. I had no idea that we shackled children in contemporary America." The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth, by Kristin Henning (Pantheon) In The …
" To change hearts and minds, we have to touch people's hearts and minds. Some of the most influential changes that have happened in our society come through creative processes...," says Andrea Jenkins in response to Lissa's question about the role of art in her political life. Andrea Jenkins is the author of the poetry …
Continue reading "Andrea Jenkins on The T is Not Silent and intersections of art and politics"
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 …
Continue reading "Tananarive Due, award-winning author and scholar of Black Horror on The Between"
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. …
Continue reading "LaTanya McQueen on her debut novel When the Reckoning Comes"
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 …
Continue reading "Resmaa Menakem on Racialized Trauma and Somatic Abolitionism"
“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 …
Continue reading "Morgan Jerkins on her debut novel, Caul Baby"
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 …