Kiese Laymon on Long Division, Revision, and Authorship as Liberation

Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In this episode, I (Mbiye) sat down with acclaimed writer Kiese Laymon to talk about his novel Long Division, among other things.Kiese and I had a wide-ranging conversation, using Long Division as our primary text, alongside the fable of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse, to think through questions of origin, ambition, and self-love. We also get into the mechanics of Kiese’s process: how sound and rhythm came before sentences for him, how hip-hop taught him more about craft than his classrooms did, and why he believes in revision as an ethos.Books & authors mentioned:Long Division and Heavy by Kiese LaymonHomebodies by Tembe Denton-HurstFree Girls by Kristen McCallumFrindle by Andrew ClementsThe Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey by J.D. SalingerPimp by Iceberg SlimThe Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha PhilyawWe Are A Haunting by Tariq WhiteThe Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.Goliath by Ronald Lee RobertsonDominion by Addie Citchens Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.