Black Writers Read

Nicole M. Young-Martin
  • 5.0 (6)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Black Writers Read showcases, celebrates, and honors the words, work, and traditions of Black writers from across the country, across genres, across experiences, and across the African Diaspora. This podcast series is produced and hosted by performance poet, playwright, events curator, and educator Nicole M. Young-Martin. Find us on Instagram: @blackwritersread. Find Nicole on Instagram: @coco_penexplore.

  1. FEB 5

    Why Not Us?, featuring wife writing team, Naomi Rivers

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Naomi Rivers. Naomi Rivers writes lesbian romance and women’s fiction. Naomi Rivers is a wife writing team who believes in romance, fairy tales, and happily ever after. Their first novel, THIS: A Simple, Complex Love Story, was written over twenty years to maintain their connection during multiple deployments. They are both retired U.S. military veterans and reside with their two rescue dogs on the east coast. Naomi’s work has appeared in I Heart SapphFic’s anthology Favorite Scenes from Favorite Authors and From a Black Perspective: The Homeland. Their second book, Why Not Us? was released on November 11. 2025. Learn more about their work: https://www.naomiriversbooks.com/ Purchase THIS: A Simple, Complex Love Story: https://bookshop.org/a/114101/9798987329702 Purchase Why Not Us?: https://bookshop.org/a/114101/9798987329733 Find Naomi Rivers on Instagram: @naomiriversbooks Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on Patreon Support the show

    1h 12m

  2. JAN 15

    How Culture & Colonization Inform Craft, On Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico and Climate Change featuring Dorsía Smith Silva

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Dorsía Smith Silva, which was live-streamed on October 19, 2025.  We chatted about her debut poetry collection, In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry Press, 2024). In this striking debut, Dorsía Smith Silva explores the devastating effects of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, highlighting the natural world, the lasting impact of hurricanes, and the marginalization of Puerto Ricans. These poems also focus on the multiple sites of oppression in the United States, especially the racial, social, and political injustices that occur every day. Smith Silva writes with a powerful, gripping voice, confronting the “drowning” of disenfranchised communities as they are displaced, exploited, and robbed of their identities, but remain resilient. Written with unflinching language and vivid imagery, In Inheritance of Drowning reveals the many facets of the lives of marginalized people. To learn more about Dorsía and her work, please visit her website at dorsiasmithsilva.com.  Purchase your copy of In Inheritance of Drowning TODAY by clicking here. Here's the list of Caribbean authors mentioned during the interview (information on each writer is hyperlinked in their names): Velma Pollard, Shara McCallum, Dionne Brand, Lorna Goodison, M. NourbeSe Philip, and V. S. Naipaul. FInd Dorsía on Instagram: @dsmithsilva Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on Patreon . Support the show

    1h 27m

  3. JAN 1

    Kiss My Art & the Living Memoir featuring Tiriq Rashad

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Tiriq Rashad, which was live-streamed on October 17, 2025 as a part of our National Black Poetry Day marathon.  We chatted about his recently released spoken word album, Kiss My Art. Tiriq Rashad, a proud native of “Atlantic-Ville” (Atlantic City and Pleasantville), blends his social work background with a gift for storytelling to create work rooted in resilience, authenticity, and healing. Author of A Diamond In God’s Dirt and shine through our shade: an evolution of self-love, his writing has earned praise from readers and icons like Nikki Giovanni for its powerful reflection of both universal and Black experiences.  Kiss My Art, which was released on October 17, 2025, is a soul-baring journey through grief, identity, and creative liberation. Merging spoken word with jazz and hip-hop, the album unfolds like a living memoir. Purchase Kiss My Art, directly on Bandcamp. Check out Nicole's spoken word album, IN/Put: Live from the Valley on Apple Music or Amazon Music Find Tiriq Rashad on Instagram: @tiriq_rashad Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on Patreon Support the show

    54 min

  4. 12/13/2025

    Filtering Out the "Noise" Through Poetry featuring Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton, which was live-streamed on October 17, 2025 as a part of our National Black Poetry Day marathon.  Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton is an award-winning poet, educator, Pushcart Prize nominee, and publisher. Lofton is the author of more than thirty-five collections of poetry and more than one-hundred and seventy spoken word albums. His poems have appeared in Clock House Journal, Revenge, UpStreet, Experience Reality Magazine, Quay, Dissident Voice, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Mid-Atlantic Review, and Blue-Collar Review. He earned both a B.A. in Creative Writing and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. He has held teaching positions at Chesapeake Bay Academy, Norfolk State University, and Elizabeth City State University. To learn more about Synnika and his work, please visit www.iamsynnika.com. Special thanks to Dr. Khadijah Ali-Coleman (featured on Season Five, Episode Four) and Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice for introducing us to Synnika. Find Synnika on Instagram: @i_am_synnika Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on Patreon Support the show

    1h 26m

  5. 11/28/2025

    Igniting New Beginnings featuring Damon Moore

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Damon Moore, which was live-streamed on October 17, 2025 as a part of our National Black Poetry Day marathon. We talked about his debut poetry collection, Anthems for an American Apocalypse Volume One: Poems for Recitation and Resuscitation.  Bridging psychology and prophecy, Damon Moore crafts mythic verse that prods you into awakening. Anthems of the American Apocalypse Volume One burns with themes of identity, culture, and rebirth.  A must-read for anyone who knows America is cracked and still wants to build something sacred from the ruins. In this genre-defying spoken-word poetry collection informed by ancestral wisdom, collective shadow work, and lived experience, Damon Moore fuses prophecy and poetry into a vision for what comes after collapse. He exposes the cultural rot of the American empire and deconstructs the machinery of its identity, systemic oppression, and spiritual fragmentation. These poems move through history, psychology, and ancestry with precision and passion. Published in August of 2025, Anthems of the American Apocalypse Volume One is a vital offering for thinkers, artists, and seekers longing to reclaim soul in a soulless age. This very eye-opening and compelling poetry collection is available for purchase on Amazon: https://a.co/d/986XdtJ Find Damon on Instagram and TikTok at iamdamonmoore.  Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on Patreon Support the show

    59 min

  6. 11/14/2025

    Rebirth, Resilience, and Reflection featuring The Honorable Tiffany D. Tilley

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with self-help author, the Honorable Tiffany D. Tilley, which was live-streamed on October 14, 2025.  Tiffany D. Tilley is an author, leader, advocate, and luminary from Detroit with a multi-faceted background that often intersects across education, communications, government, real estate development, community and economic development, and nonprofit leadership. A dedicated public servant, she was elected to the Michigan State Board of Education in 2018 with nearly 1.8 million votes and later ran for Congress in Michigan’s 10th District. Passionate about literacy, equity, Early Childhood Education, mental health, foster youth, and education reform. Tilley has been a tireless advocate both locally and nationally. She has fought for social justice, amplifying community voices and advancing grassroots initiatives that create meaningful change. As a State Board Member, she has worked to dismantle systemic barriers in education and beyond. Through her development and nonprofit leadership, she has secured approximately $20 million in resources for communities across Southeastern Michigan. Tilley holds an MBA from the University of Detroit Mercy and has received global leadership training from C-Suite executives and government leaders in Italy, China, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Her greatest role is being a mother of two, inspiring change through leadership and service. During our conversation, we chatted about Tiffany’s Know Thyself Book Series. Finding strength through reflection, purpose through healing, and power through authenticity, the Know Thyself Book Series includes four books: The Journey to Self-Empowerment, Virtues of Leadership, Getting Over the Hump: A Voyage to the Top, and Rebirth. This series is more than books, it’s a movement to inspire self-discovery, emotional resilience, self-determination, and positive transformation. Purchase the Know Thyself book series: https://www.phoenixrisingpublishingcompany.com/know-thyself-book- series/know-thyself-book-series Find Tiffany on Instagram: @thriveandrisewithtiffany Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on Patreon Support the show

    1h 7m

  7. 10/10/2025

    It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day featuring Dr. Shonda Buchanan

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Dr. Shonda Buchanan, which was live-streamed on September 14, 2025. We talked about her recent poetry collection, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone and her debut memoir, Black Indian. Kalamazoo, Michigan native Dr. Shonda Buchanan is a three-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Oxfam Ambassador and a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and PEN America Mentor. An Associate Professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University and Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Shonda is the author of three collections of poetry, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, Who’s Afraid of Black Indians?, Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country as well as the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.” Former Board President for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, and Board member of the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival and the Kalamazoo Arts Council, Shonda has published in The Mississippi Review, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, LA Times Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, Red Ink Journal, LA Parents Magazine and freelanced for the International Review of African American Art, Westways, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Daily Press and Sisters of AARP. Shonda’s forthcoming essay collection, Children of the Mixed Blood Trail, explores mixed-race migration in North America. An English Language Specialist with the Department of State, Shonda is currently shopping a Black Lives Matter book of poetry, America’s Bloodflowers: Poems, as well as Artificial Earth: Poems and Essays, about the first founding mixed-race “settlers” of Los Angeles and California Indians.  To learn more about Dr. Buchanan, please visit shondabuchanan.com. Follow Shonda Buchanan on Instagram: @shondabuchanan Follow Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/  Support Black Writers Read on Patreon Support the show

    1h 2m

  8. 09/19/2025

    Claiming a Black-Biracial Identity Through Memory, Memoir, and Connections with Shannon Luders-Manuel

    Send us a text This episode features our conversation with Shannon Luders-Manuel, which was live-streamed on September 7, 2025. We welcomed Shannon back to the virtual platform to talk about her debut memoir, The One Who Loves You.  Shannon Luders-Manuel is the author of the memoir, The One Who Loves You: A Memoir of Growing Up Biracial in a Black and White World, published by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press which was released in February of 2025. Shannon holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written extensively about race, with bylines in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. In 2015, she wrote the viral For Harriet essay “What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives.” Luders-Manuel presented her master’s thesis at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference in Chicago in 2012 and was a featured writer at the 2014 Mixed Remixed Festival in Los Angeles. She performs sensitivity reads for major publishers, providing feedback on Black and mixed-race characters and issues. To learn more about Shannon, please visit shannonludersmanuel.com.  Purchase your copy of The One Who Loves You today via Black Writers Read's Bookshop link. Check out the first time Shannon was on the virtual platform: Season One Episode Seven Find Shannon on Instagram: @shannon_luders_manuel Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support the show

    1h 2m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Black Writers Read showcases, celebrates, and honors the words, work, and traditions of Black writers from across the country, across genres, across experiences, and across the African Diaspora. This podcast series is produced and hosted by performance poet, playwright, events curator, and educator Nicole M. Young-Martin. Find us on Instagram: @blackwritersread. Find Nicole on Instagram: @coco_penexplore.

Information

  • Creator
    Nicole M. Young-Martin
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    102
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Black Writers Read
  • Show Website
    Black Writers Read