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.

Find David on Instagram: @davidjacksonambrose

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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.

Find Lynne on Instagram: @letpms
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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.

Find Nzadi on Instagram: @nzadikeita

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