Black Writers Read Retrospective: On Heritage, Our History, & Our Future(s)

Send us Fan MailThis episode features excerpts from four conversations we’ve had with guests that reflect on topics relevant to the Juneteenth holiday including family, ancestral influences, food, culture, and honoring our pasts.Included on this bonus episode are the following conversations:Saida Agostini (S2 E6 of the livestream series/Retrospective Episode on the audio podcast) read excerpts from let the dead in. let the dead in is an exploration of the mythologies that seek to subjugate Black bodies, and the counter-stories that reject such subjugation. Audacious, sensual, and grieving, this work explores how Black women harness the fantastic to craft their own road to freedom. A journey across Guyana, London, and the United States, it is a meditation on black womanhood, queerness, the legacy of colonization, and pleasure. These poems craft a creation story fat with love, queerness, mermaids, and blackness.  Listen to Saida's full interview.St. Clair Detrick-Jules (S3 E1) is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, author, activist, and public speaker. She captures personal stories and intimate moments centering Black liberation, immigrant justice, and women's rights. An Afro-Caribbean artist who remains rooted in her community, St. Clair grounds her work in radical love, joy and the knowledge that a more just world is possible. Her book, My Beautiful Black Hair: 101 Natural Hair Stories from the Sisterhood (Chronicle Books, September 2021), showcases the photographs and stories of Black women embracing their crowns. Listen to St. Clair's full interview.Lisa Pegram (S3 E10) is a writer, arts integration specialist and publishing professional who hails from Washington, DC. She has over 20 years of experience in high-level program design for such organizations as the Smithsonian Institute, Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Geographic. She served as DC WritersCorps program director for a decade, and as co-chair of United Nations affiliate international women’s conferences in the US, India and Bali. She is currently working on a family memoir that is a narrative cookbook which explores her life story through the lens of food and music. Listen to Lisa's full interview.Desiree Cooper's (S3 E6) Nothing Special is a buddy story that spans generations. Published by Wayne State University Press and illustrated by Bec Stone, it's also a love letter to the black family connections that survived the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1970, more than six million African Americans left the Jim Crow South, but they never forgot the culture, the land, and the family they left behind. Nothing Special celebrates the enduring connection between the generations who stayed in the South, and the millions of emigrants for whom it will always be home.Listen to Desiree's full interview.Sign up for our virtual summer book club!Support the show