While not all the poetry that inspires me has been by a Black person, a good chunk of them have. Without them, my poetry would be lifeless. These are the poetry collections that have defined me this decade.
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Albert recently completed one of the 2019 Booker prize winners, Girl, Woman, Other. “The novel reads like a collection of short stories, with each of the twelve characters being given their own chapter, culminating in a grand reception that craftily threads them together.”
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Check out Latonya’s take on the graphic novel, Agents of the Realm by Mildred Louis. It's a fun heroic comic book set in college combining monster fighting with coming of age.
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Welcome, Deborah Harris, one of our newest contributors! She took to reviewing The Friends this week, a work by Rosa Guy, about complicated relationships, poverty, and life in 1960s Harlem.
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Need some tips and tricks to help you out of your reading rut? Our contributor Krysten knows the ails of book burnout and wants to get you back on the right track!
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Contributor Krysten Jackson gives us a breakdown of her thoughts on Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemis.
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Guest writer Albert Williams finds that communities can sprout up around books in the most organic ways.
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Welcome guest writer Albert Williams as he breaks down his thoughts on Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the newest title by Marlon James.
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Our guest writer Latonya Pennington speaks to the music that inspires them to get prolific, artist Angel Haze.
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Welcoming guest writer, Latonya Pennington and their take on Laina Dawes' book What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal.
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Darkness in the Margins is storyteller magic, and Lola Rainey’s powerful command of voice in her poetry and prose makes her a literary conjure woman. Rainey makes darkness visible and silence speak.
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Ibi Zoboi (EEE-bee zoe-Boy) is a Haitian-American, young adult writer most famous for her books American Street, Pride, and Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America. Her newest title, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, centers on Ebony-Grace Norfleet, a Star Trek loving southerner visiting her father in Harlem for the summer.
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There is no doubt that Rod Palmer has this process on autopilot. His new book is a twist in the who-done-it and his response to making a change within the genre of Urban Fiction.
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Want to know how do I get from a first draft to published post? Here are six strategies I use to proof my writing before it gets to you.
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Inspired by her life experiences and filled with several different kinds of poems, Worthy is the culmination of years patiently waiting to be recognized.
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If you can’t tell by now, I’m a bit of a library fanatic. I even have a post I wrote about the library hacks I use almost daily.
After you check that out (go ahead, I’ll wait), here are 4 reasons why my heart beats for LAPL:
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Have you gotten to know the story of why Black & Bookish came to be? Read about why I went “all-Black”.
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Matthew Williams may not be putting “writer” as his day job, but that could be changing in the very near future. This Los Angeles native has authored his first novel, The Bridge Home.
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In celebration of Black History Month and the contributions of Zora Neale Hurston, the Skirball Cultural Center, in collaboration with The Los Angeles Urban League and the Ebony Repertory Theater, presented "Barracoon: A Tribute to Zora Neale Hurston”. I was able to attend and share my thoughts on what it really means to celebrate Black History Month.
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Many people start their New Year resolutions with a reading challenge. But if you haven’t, or didn’t know this was a thing to do, you have plenty of time to decide. A reading challenge is an open-ended list of books based on specific topics or themes. Check out the list below for some of my favorite reading challenges.
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