Khalisa Rae Thompson - Writer and Poet, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Griot & Grey Owl Black Southern Writers Conference

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, graduate students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.Today’s conversation is with writer and poet Khalisa Rae Thompson, who is co-founder and co-director of Griot and Grey Owl Black Southern Writers Conference. Her writing has been featured in a number of literary and popular venues and she is the author of Real Girls Have Real Problems and of Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat. In this conversation, we discuss the intersection of writing and memory work, poetry and community connection, and the politics of publishing on Black life.