LaTanya McQueen on her debut novel When the Reckoning Comes

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. …

“Change comes one at a time” – author Claudia Rankine on her latest work, Just Us: An American Conversation

Launching the sixth season of BMR, Lissa sits down with poet and essayist Claudia Rankine to dive into her latest work Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020). Rankine describes the book as the result of a challenge she set to herself to talk to white men - a group she rarely talks to …

Author Kalisha Buckhanon on her new novel Speaking of Summer

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 …

‘We are here in the right now and we have to be truthful and courageous’ – Author and professor Emily Bernard on finding her voice and speaking the truth

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 …

‘I found God in myself and I loved her. I loved her fiercely’ – Remembering the great Ntozake Shange; with Sarah Bellamy, Artistic Director of Penumbra Theatre

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 …

“With each poem I had to say: how is this going to be different than the story they’re running from?” – poet Patricia Smith on her award-winning collection, ‘Incendiary Art’

"We have to figure out, not only some way to write the story, but how to draw people to the story and keep them in it," says poet and spoken word artist Patricia Smith of the work of poets in the fourth season premier of Black Market Reads - her most recent poetry collection, Incendiary …

Live Episode: Sonya Renee Taylor in Minneapolis

*Originally released March 2018 In this episode, recorded at a live event at Jefferson Community School in Minneapolis, MN, Lissa Jones hosts a fascinating conversation with Sonya Renee Taylor the activist and author at the center of the global movement The Body Is Not an Apology, which advocates radical self-love as tool for political resistance …

‘It took me 20 years to write this book…because it took that long to live’ – Author Desiree Cooper on her award-winning flash-fiction collection

*Originally released March 2018 Desiree Cooper, author of the award-winning short fiction collection Know the Mother (Wayne State University Press, 2016) talks with host Lissa Jones about the complexities of motherhood and the ways that motherhood interacts, and at times conflicts, with the many other roles that women take on. We reached Desiree Cooper by phone at …

Cave Canem poet Mary Moore Easter on her new collection ‘The Body of the World’

*Originally released March 2018 What if the ancestors spoke to you and it came out as poetry?  In this episode, Lissa Jones talks with writer and educator Mary Moore Easter about history, family, poetry, and her newly published poetry collection titled The Body of the World (Mad Hat Press). They also discuss the Cave Canem Foundation, an …

Author Erica Armstrong Dunbar: ‘I don’t think there’s a better moment to have a story about a 22 year old black woman defying the President of the United States’

  *Originally released July 2017 Listen: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/5580944 In this episode, host Lissa Jones speaks with Erica Armstrong Dunbar about her recent work, Never Caught: The Washington's Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge. We reached her by phone in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dunbar is an author and historian focusing on the experiences of African American women in the context …