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I've been so excited to share insight on a project I've been working on for the past few months. Serving as editor on this project, I wanted to give the Black Writers Read community a preview of the anthology, Heavy is the Crown, which is scheduled for release in August of 2024. It is now available for pre-order.

Produced under the auspices of A Queen’s Narrative, Heavy is the Crown features essays and creative writing contributed by twenty-two women, femme-identified, and trans folx from across the country. Topics explored in this book include experiences with addiction, recovery, sexual assault, toxic workplaces, journeys as mothers and caregivers, pregnancy, immigration, identity, identities, domestic violence, generational trauma, incarceration, suicide, suicide ideation, and mental health. Authors explored their healing journeys and life lessons learned while offering advice for others who are going through something that might be similar.

In this episode, you'll hear from eight women who contributed their stories to the anthology in a mix of brief interviews and readings of excerpts from poems and creative nonfiction included in the anthology: T’challa Williams, Laverne Ben-Mansel, Yaya Gloria Agosto, Nzima Hutchings, Regine Jackson, Queenpen, Gri Saex and Barbara McClane.

Based in Western Massachusetts, A Queen's Narrative is a BIPOC women-led empowerment company whose mission is to define narrative power and use narrative storytelling to empower women and girls to become their best version. Using various platforms like blogs, newsletters, anthologies, events, and youth development programming help them in achieving the vision of amplifying the voices of women and girls for the rest of the world to hear. A Queen's Narrative is especially committed to providing free thematic youth development workshops that strengthen youth skills in public speaking, teamwork, leadership, and creative expression.

Special thanks to Samantha Hamilton, co-founder of A Queen’s Narrative and a contributor to the anthology, every person involved in A Queen’s Narrative and to each of the twenty-two women who have contributed their stories to Heavy is the Crown.

To learn more about A Queen’s Narrative, please visit aqueensnarrative.com.

For those of you who are local to Western Massachusetts, please join us in person on Sunday, August 18 at 11 a.m. for Brunch over Books, the official launch celebration of Heavy is the Crown. Tickets are available by visiting aqueensnarrative.com. By joining us for the event, you’ll be able to meet some of the authors and hear more about the process of creating this anthology. Print versions of the book will be available after this book launch event.

Pre-order your copy of Heavy is the Crown TODAY by visiting: https://aqueensnarrative.com/heavy-is-the-crown.

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This bonus episode features excerpts from five interviews from Season Four - those that we had with authors who write memoir. Over the summer, we will be revisiting conversations that cover the nuisances of genre, form, and style - offering mini masterclasses filled with advice and insight from some of our guests. This retrospective offers insight on source material, exploring the effects of traumatic experiences, self-reflecting on formative moments in life, and honoring the past. Memoir, which is considered creative nonfiction, offers writers a space to tackle difficult situations with grace and humility - also a chance to implore the mechanics of fiction to expand upon memory and circumstances.

Included on this bonus episode are:

Nada Samih-Rotondo (Writers Across the Margins, S4 E7) is a multi-genre Palestinian American writer, educator, and mother. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and Squat Birth Journal. Our conversation featured her debut memoir, ALL WATER HAS PERFECT MEMORY, which blends folklore and history taking readers through the author's ancestral origins-and explores generations of silence and eventually, connection.

Minda Honey's (S4 E6) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS (Little A, October 2023), is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.

K E Garland (S4 E8) uses personal essays and memoir to de-marginalize women's experiences with an intent to highlight and humanize contemporary issues. She has published essays with Midnight & Indigo, Raising Mothers, and For Harriet. We chatted about her debut memoir, IN SEARCH OF A SALVE: MEMOIR OF A SEX ADDICT.

Wakisha "Kisha" Stewart 's (S4 E18) SONATA FOR A DAMAGED HEART recounts the complicated professional and emotional journey that Kisha takes from heart failure to being selected in 2022 by the American Heart Association as one of twelve spokeswomen advocating for women’s heart health in its national education campaign, Reclaim Your Rhythm.

Lisa Braxton (S4 E19) is the author of the award-winning DANCING BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS: A DAUGHTER'S REFLECTION ON LOVE AND LOSS. This memoir in essays is a powerful meditation on grief, a deeply personal mosaic of a daughter’s remembrances of beautiful, challenging and heartbreaking moments of life with her family. It speaks to anyone who has lost a loved one and is trying to navigate the world without them while coming to terms with complicated emotions.

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In celebration of Juneteenth, we revisit our conversations with fiction authors featured during Season Four to reflect on approaches to creating worlds for our characters and what informs this work.

Included in this bonus episode are:

David Jackson Ambrose (S4 E17) writes on the intersections of race, sexuality and generational trauma. During our conversation, which took place during National Mental Health Awareness Month, we had a chance to talk about David’s three books, State of the Nation, A Blind Eye, and Unlawful DISorder.

Kerika Fields (S4 E5) ​​is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer and photographer whose work has been published and exhibited widely. We talked about her novella, With Your Bad Self, a coming-of-age love story set in an economically challenged Brooklyn on the precipice of WWII where 'Love Conquers All' may not be true this time.

Donna Hemans (S4 E10) is the author of three novels, River Woman, Tea by the Sea, and The House of Plain Truth. She lives in Maryland, and is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, D.C. Central to our conversation was Donna’s recently released novel, The House of Plain Truth , a lyrical, lush, evocative story about a fractured Jamaican family and a daughter determined to reclaim her home.

Chana Shinegba's (S4 E13) her debut novel, Dancer in the Bullpen blends elements of autobiographical fiction with magical realism. The novel speaks to those who, like Chana, have grappled with their sense of uniqueness and emerged empowered to embrace their true selves. Dancer in the Bullpen is scheduled for release on June 21, 2024.

Aina Hunter (S4 E3) is an artist based in Western Massachusetts with a background in journalism, Food Studies and Japanese. We talked about her debut novel (science fiction), Charlotte and the Chickenman: the Inevitable Nigrescence of Charlotte-Noa Tibbit.

T.H. Moore (S4 E9) is a Southwest Philadelphia native who relocated to Camden, New Jersey at the age of ten. Blending his experience living and working abroad combined with imagination helped formulate the basis of, and inspired him to write his first novel, The End Justifies the Means. His forthcoming memoir, Ghetto Bastard, scheduled for release in July of 2024.

Angie Chatman (S4 E12) is a writer, storyteller and 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee having written short stories and essays for a variety of publications and platforms including Insider Personal Finance, Brevity, TaintTaintTaint Magazine, and The Rumpus. Born and raised on Chicago's South Side, Angie now lives in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston with her family.

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This episode features our conversation with Lisa Braxton about her recently released memoir, Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss, which was live-streamed on June 1, 2024.

Lisa Braxton is the author of the award-winning Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss (Sea Crow Press, April 2024). The memoir in essays is a powerful meditation on grief, a deeply personal mosaic of a daughter’s remembrances of beautiful, challenging and heartbreaking moments of life with her family. It speaks to anyone who has lost a loved one and is trying to navigate the world without them while coming to terms with complicated emotions. She is also the author of the novel, The Talking Drum, winner of a 2021 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Gold Medal, overall winner of Shelf Unbound book review magazine’s 2020 Independently Published Book Award, winner of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Finalist for the International Book Awards. She is an Emmy nominated former TV journalist and is a writing instructor at Grub Street Boston. She is the presidents of the Greater Boston Section of the National Council of Negro Women and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Lisa Braxton's parents died within two years of each other-her mother from ovarian cancer, her father from prostate cancer. While caring for her mother she was stunned to find out that she, herself, had a life-threatening illness—breast cancer. In the intimate, lyrical memoir-in-essays of Dancing Between the Raindrops, Lisa Braxton takes us to the core of her loss and extends a lifeline of comfort to anyone who needs to be reminded that in their grief they are not alone.

To learn more about Lisa and her work, please visit lisabraxton.com.

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This episode features our conversation with Wakisha Stewart, which was live-streamed on May 18, 2024 in recognition of Women’s Health Week (May 12th-18th) and National Share a Story Month.

Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart is a wife, mother of three, nurse, heart attack survivor, and a national advocate for heart health dedicated to improving the quality of cardiovascular health care for everyone. Since her heart attack in 2011 at age 31, she has conducted extensive research about the specific health risks that women, particularly Black women, face.

A dynamic, nationally recognized speaker on ways to improve heart health through lifestyle changes and a fierce advocate for systemic changes in the health care system to guarantee equity and social justice for all, Kisha, a nurse with a unique perspective and survivor on a mission, was a national spokeswoman chosen in 2022 by the American Heart Association (AHA) to educate the public about the risks of cardiovascular disease.

In collaboration with the American Heart Association, Kisha wrote the memoir, SONATA FOR A DAMAGED HEART.

SONATA FOR A DAMAGED HEART is one Black woman’s story of a near-death experience following her second pregnancy and the racial disparities in the healthcare industry that contributed to it. The memoir is both a moving, lyrically told story of a decade-long struggle to survive a near-fatal heart attack with dignity and a clarion call for community-wide mobilization to guarantee health care equity.

SONATA FOR A DAMAGED HEART recounts the complicated professional and emotional journey that Kisha takes from heart failure to being selected in 2022 by the American Heart Association as one of twelve spokeswomen advocating for women’s heart health in its national education campaign, Reclaim Your Rhythm.

To learn more about Kisha and her book, please visit kishaandscad.com.

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This episode features our conversation with David Jackson Ambrose, which was live-streamed on May 11, 2024 in recognition of National Mental Health Awareness Month.

David Jackson Ambrose writes on the intersections of race, sexuality and generational trauma. Through fiction, his work explores various genres, topics, and themes including African American life, Black history, LGBTQ issues and life, prison industrial complex, mental health, and generational trauma. David has an MFA in Creative Writing from Temple University, an MA in Writing Studies from Saint Joseph’s University, and a BA in Africana Studies from The University of Pennsylvania. He has over twenty years of experience working in social services. During our conversation, we had a chance to talk about David’s three books, State of the Nation, A Blind Eye, and Unlawful DISorder.

State of the Nation (The TMG Firm, 2018) is a Lambda Award finalist. State of the Nation looks at the impact of the Atlanta Child Murders and Tuskegee experiment on three friends living in Philadelphia. Each struggles to survive and create an identity in a world that ignores them at best, and preys upon them at worst, much like the children in Atlanta.

A Blind Eye (NineStar Press, 2021) is a winner of the Rainbow Book Award, looks at homelessness, male to male (m2m) domestic violence, and the ways American school systems treat Black children with special needs compared to their white counterparts.

David's most recent work, Unlawful DISorder (Jaded Ibis Press, 2022), looks at racial disparities in diagnoses & treatment for Black men with mental health disorders when treatment is imposed by the judicial system instead of the behavioral health system.

To learn more about David and his work, please visit https://davidjacksonambrose.com.

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This episode features our conversation with Lynne Thompson, which was live-streamed on April 14, 2024 closing out National Poetry Month.

Lynne Thompson served as the 4th Poet Laureate of the City of Los Angeles. She's the author of four collections of poetry: Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007), Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2013), Fretwork (Marsh Hawk Press, 2019) and, most recently, Blue On A Blue Palette (BOA Editions, 2024). In 2022, Thompson was awarded a Laureate Fellowship by the Academy of American Poets and in 2023, she received the George Drury Smith Award for Achievement in Poetry from Beyond Baroque. Thompson has also received fellowships from the City of Los Angeles, the Summer Literary Series in Kenya, and Vermont Studio Center. Recent work has been published or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast. Thompson sits on the Boards of the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, Los Angeles Review of Books, and her alma mater, Scripps College.

Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette (which is featured on this episode) reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods. The documentation of these personal odysseys—which vary stylistically from abecedarians to free verse to centos—replicate the many ways women travel through the stages of their lives, all negotiated on a palette encompassing various shades of blue. These poems demand your attention, your voice: “Say history. Claim. Say wild.”

This episode is presented in collaboration with Perugia Press. Founded in 1997, Perugia Press is a nonprofit feminist press that publishes one beautifully designed book each year: the winner of the Perugia Press Prize, their annual national contest for first or second books of poetry by women-identified authors. To learn more about Perugia Press and the Perugia Press Prize, please visit perugiapress.org.

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This episode features our conversation with M. Nzadi Keita, which was live-streamed on April 14, 2024 during National Poetry Month.

M. Nzadi Keita's new poetry collection, Migration Letters (Beacon Press, April 2, 2024), reflects on Black working-class identity and culture in Philadelphia. Her second book, Brief Evidence of Heaven (Whirlwind Press, 2014), shed light on Anna Murray Douglass, Frederick Douglass’ first wife and was cited in David Blight ‘s prize-winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, Her writing appears in anthologies and journals such as A Face to Meet the Faces: A Persona Poetry Anthology, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, and About Place. Keita won a Pew Fellow in Poetry, a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award, and served as an adviser to the documentary, BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez. For many years, she taught creative writing, American literature, and Africana Studies at Ursinus College.

Her latest book, Migration Letters, is a poetry collection that takes a closer look at what it means to be Black in America just after the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. This new addition to Beacon Press’s “Raised Voices Poetry Series” centers on Black working-class Philadelphia from the 1960s to the present day. Migration Letters shares a story about Black people that resonates across generations—Black people innovating, learning by doing, teaching by witnessing, and evolving in spite of themselves.

To learn more about Nzadi and her work, please visit www.zeekeita.com.

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