Vulgar Geniuses

Three years have passed since Hanif Abdurraqib's essay collection Little Devil In America tackled the subject of Black performance in American culture. In his newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, Hanif asks readers to sit with the idea of the common enemy, one which he defines as a person who might interrupt the affection of anyone we love.

Hanif presents us with a love story for his home state of Ohio, basketball, and frames it within the window of success and interruption. Woven within the stories of basketball greats and unknowns who fall short of obtaining victories, readers wrestle with the conversations that beg to ask, "What does one do with the grief and loss of a dream?"

Through an examination of queerness, race, and the power that they play within the lives of a Southern Black family, Jennifer Neal's Notes On Her Color is an inventive and vibrant story as mother and daughter share the ability to change the color of their skin. Gabrielle and her mother have a uniquely close relationship, but the opposite is true with her temperamental father. The patriarch's only desire is that their skin must remain white at all times while in his presence.

Neal talks about reaching into satirical storylines and historical moments (that feel satirical) that became the inspirational foundation of her debut novel. She also talks about her hope that her work adds to the many stories of queer narratives in spaces that seek to erase them.

In 2023, we celebrated our third anniversary with Yvette Lisa Ndlovu's debut short story collection, Drinking From Graveyard Wells. Her book captivated us as she worked magic, death, and time travel into stories that explored themes of family, citizenship, and autonomy. Yvette's collection grapples with her country's future with stories that reflect Zimbabwe's past under the ruling thumb of the former dictator Mugabe.

We talk with Ndlovu about the women in her stories being able to harness power in death, gentrification, and the sacrifices made when giving up home for citizenship in another country.

Quietly Hostile is the fifth book by Samantha Irby, and it is truly a love letter to all people who have embraced the power of not giving a fuck what anyone thinks. Her hilarious collection of essays gives us a peek into what Irby's life looks like after the world shut down and left her to take a swan dive into an ocean of QVC merchandise.

Samantha opens up about her undying and unwavering love for The Dave Matthews Band, gives a point-by-point analysis of what will make for the best porn storyline, and reveals the drama that happens in the comment section of the New York Times' Spelling Bee app.

We bid adieu to 2023, but not before we take a final walk down memory lane to celebrate the many wins we had during our spectacular Jordan Year.

Dennie and I talk about the stellar guests that graced our show, the interviews that were our favorite, and we give our yearly resolution wish list for 2024.

Longlisted for the National Book Award in 2022, Maria, Maria & Other Short Stories sealed Marytza K. Rubio's name in the history books for creating an immersive short story collection. Wrapped in themes of revenge, grief, and love are mystical tales throughout this exceptional novella.

Rubio spoke with us about creating an interactive book that gives artistic license over to the reader by letting them become a part of the story as the story becomes a part of them. We talk about her personal connection and inspiration behind the stories, and we start the show with a special tarot reading.

Saints of the Household from author Ari Tison is a novel woven in a gorgeous marriage of poetry and prose that presents a story of brotherhood, heritage, and choices made to defend a family member who suffers a violent act at the hands of a high school star athlete.

In this debut, Ari gifts us a story of brothers Jay & Max, two indigenous Bribri American teenagers growing up in Minnesota. At major turning points in their lives, each is dealing with abuse at the hand of their father in ways that cause unrest in their home and their relationship with each other.

We were extremely fortunate to speak with Ari about her book, growing up as one of the only 5 Bribri Americans in the country while stitching her people's culture into the foreground of her novel.

DYSCALCULIA: A LOVE STORY OF EPIC MISCALCULATION, from poet and essayist Camonghne Felix, is a powerful and brilliant memoir that serves as a masterclass in investigating self when the heart and mind are reeling from the pain of broken and scattered connections. Felix braids her stories of lost love, a complicated relationship with her mother, and her late diagnosis of dyscalculia and bipolar disorder to reveal the power of reclaiming self through healing.

Camonghne joined us in conversation to discuss her personal journey in the systems built that deliberately dismiss the pain of Black women. We talk about advocating for a better education & mental health system for young Black children and what it took for her to get to a place of self-love and acceptance to create a fuller life for herself.

The year was 2008, and as an unknown politician was taking the world by storm with hope and change, a young twenty-something Minda Honey was crossing over state lines to establish a new life with her high school sweetheart on the West Coast of California, only to find the origin of her debut memoir The Heartbreak Years.

Minda Honey graces her presence in the City Beautiful for a live podcast recording at Zeppelin Books. Orlando was the second stop on her nine-city book tour, and we made sure to roll out the red carpet for a Vulgar Geniuses' first. We talked about everything from her past relationships and being vulnerable on the page while maintaining her gift of humor and wit.

It's the Takeover Episode! The Vulgar Geniuses were invited to Rollins College to host a live recording at the Rollins Museum of Art in September of this year. Joined on the stage by five of Rollins' most talented voices, Dennie & Veronica speak with the young, up-and-coming writers about their love for the craft of writing.

Pull out pen and paper to take notes because school is in session! Fatima Sani, Angelisse Perez, Asha Budhai, Isabel Palanco, and Zaria Clark will be your instructors this evening as we all learn how to leave a stage in ashes! Stick around for extra credit when the Vulgar Geniuses find themselves in the interview chair with questions from the audience.

Aaliyah Bilal's TEMPLE FOLK is a captivating short story collection devoted to showing Black Muslims pursuing a life full of desire necessary to reaching one's own truth. This debut serves as a compelling means for America to recognize and acknowledge the historical significance of Black Muslims within the country's tapestry.

Bilal's origin story in the publishing world is like nothing we've ever heard. She shares with us how Temple Folk received a book deal before she even had an agent after taking a chance on a tweet from a young, up-and-coming senior editor at Simon & Schuster. Bilal also talks to us about the inspiring works of Edward P. Jones and the tearful full-circle moment when her work was met with his praise.

Myriam Gurba invites us to give a critical eye to those who lurk in the darkness and the villains that walk untouchable in broad daylight with her recent essay collection, CREEP: ACCUSATIONS AND CONFESSIONS. This poignant look at historical figures thrown in the media spotlight with their heinous crimes while their victims are left forgotten in the shadows. Gurba asks readers to take a step back, and search for the things left unsaid about the women whose lives were erased from the narrative.

We sit down with Gurba to talk about the multitudes of the word "creep" and how we all have the potential of finding ourselves in moments of participating in creep-like behavior. She also shares her desire to include Santa Maria, California within the literary canon and her undying love for the The Real Housewives franchise.

From takedowns to chokeholds, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a martial art practice that comprises over a thousand technique moves to push one's opponent into a state of submission. In Rolling: A Ladies' Guide to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, author Melanie Farmer captures readers as she explains this physical art form and braids it with the evolution of her relationship with her mother in a hilarious introspection of her life.   

The newest release from Burrow Press explores the dichotomy of gender as it relates to a male-dominated space. We sit down with Melanie to talk about her chapbook, the choice of creating a nonfiction collection in the second person, and how this collection of essays found its way into the hands of Colson Whitehead.  

SHE IS A HAUNTING is an engrossing coming-of-age novel from Trang Thanh Tran. While visiting her estranged father in Vietnam as a guise to reconnect, Jade Nguyen's main objective is to get the money needed for her to attend college in the Fall. Her father has enlisted her help to build a website for a potential bed & breakfast as he renovates a French colonial house. However, the house has other ideas and will do everything in its power to keep Jade and her family from leaving. We speak to Tran about the dream that inspired this novel and creating a character that lives on the tightrope of duality while holding the secret of their sexuality and struggling with their cultural identity.

This past April, visual artist Anthony Darby wowed audiences with the closing of his first solo gallery exhibit, "Familiar Faces," at the SoWhat art gallery in Orlando, Florida. Darby's work was a wall-to-wall installation of faces drawn throughout the gallery. These portraits, inspired by the usage of Near Eastern and Ancient Egyptian techniques used in art, beckoned art goers to be pulled in to see the similarities that we all share when stripped down to our eyes, noses, and smiles.

Queens, New York native and Florida-raised artist Darby, sits down to talk about how he stumbled upon the art world, his current obsession with faces, and what he desires for the future of art.

Drawing from his own experiences as a refugee from Vietnam, Young Vo brilliantly weaves a tale that has resonated with children of all backgrounds in his book Gibberish. We are introduced to Dat, a young boy who has traveled to a new country to start a new life and is met with a new and very confusing language that sounds a lot like gibberish. But when he meets a peculiar character named Julie, Dat's world begins to unfold. In this episode, Young discusses the desire for children to recognize the power that comes when one can make genuine connections with others from different cultures and backgrounds. He also talks about the real-life "Julie" and his chance meeting with Arthur A. Levine that changed his life.

No matter where he resides, for Jamil Jan Kochai, Logar will always be home. And it is Logar that he returns to for a second time in his award-winning short story collection "The Haunting of Hajji Hotak." This book carries readers through Afghanistan with beautifully complex stories of multidimensional family lines and friendships that must find a way to breathe between the lines of war.

Through magical realism, Kochai writes of a young man unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy as he plays a game of Call of Duty. And a teacher who suddenly morphs into a monkey after losing his connection to his religion. We also talk about his favorite MF Doom album and if he dons his National Book Award Finalist medallion as he shops for eggs at the local grocery store.

We kick off the second half of our podcast season with our first live recording with a packed house at Stardust Video & Coffee in Orlando, Fl. We celebrate our third anniversary with the first in the Midnight Marauders Story Hour series. For this show, we bring to the stage four of Florida's most brilliant writers for a live reading, and of course, they all take turns in the hot seat chair. Brianna Johnson, Vulgar Geniuses alum Michelle Lizet Flores, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, and Ryan Rivas join us on the stage. Grab your favorite cup of joe, and get settled in for an hour of the Vulgar Geniuses Podcast live at Stardust!

Fatimah Asghar shows us the many faces of sisterhood when tested by the constant waves of grief and neglect in their debut novel When We Were Sisters. Kausar, Alisha, and Noreen are suddenly orphans after the murder of their father and the death of their mother years prior. Their uncle takes the girls away from the only home they've ever known and forces them to grow up in a run-down apartment abandoned for weeks and sometimes without food and adult supervision.

We mark the end of our second literary year with our interview with Fatimah as they speak about the creative format of centering this story around the girls, while leaving the adults nameless and, at times, redacted. They also share what it was like to approach this story of grief during the early years of lockdowns and what it means to give one's self the permission to create beyond the limitations of others.

In her memoir Fruit Punch, Kendra Allen's seamless and sublime merging of poetry, prose, and humor is captivating as she shares her life growing up in Dallas, Texas. Forging her way through family turmoil and unspeakable moments of sexual abuse, Allen finds herself in the chair of her therapist's office, attempting to work through the childhood memories that she continues to come back to over and over again. We take a deep and hilarious dive into the life of this talented writer as Allen shares with us her life growing up with a mother who would show up at the funerals of veterans she never knew. She also tells us how this book helped her to address things she tried so hard to say in her previous poetry collections.

Content Warning: Trauma, sexual abuse, and depression.

In an age of heavy attempts at erasure, visual artists and photographers Michael Davis and Douglas Shindler are making leaps and bounds to preserve for the future remembrance of all things Black. They are the masterminds behind The Black Library, a collaborative community-driven project with a mission to celebrate Black culture and history for the citizens of Sullivan County, New York, and all those who will visit.

In this episode, we are joined by these two creators as they discuss infusing their personal stories into their art, the urgency to create a space that highlights the contributions of the people of Monticello, NY and what it was like when they received the call that they had won a $400,000 grant to bring The Black Library to life.

Natalia Sylvester's young adult novel BREATHE AND COUNT BACK FROM TEN will have everyone reimagining a life where all we did was swim our hearts away in the cool spring Florida waters. This beautiful story opens us to the world of Verónica, a Peruvian-American teen who loves the water so much that she longs to become a mermaid at an aquatic theme park. She has two things standing in her way, her overprotective father and her diagnosis of hip dysplasia.

Natalia reveals her journey as a writer who wanted to see characters reflected between pages that mirrored her life as a person with a disability and desires to live beyond the expectations of others. She also talks with us about young people finding power in speaking up and advocating for themselves in a world that feels they would never know what would be best for them.

Debut novel, The Survivalists, from Kashana Cauley starts out as a rom-com that suddenly turns into a love story made for Dateline. We look to see what happens when a young New York lawyer meets a coffee lover who has an over-zealous obsession with preparing for disasters and mastering the right cup of joe.

Kashana joins us on the podcast to discuss her novel's inspiration, her own experience of watching a friend get sucked into a life of becoming a survivalist, and her decision to switch from a career as an attorney to venture into the world of comedy writing for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and the animated series The Great North.

Delivered in a magnificent thread of verse, We Are All So Good At Smiling by Amber McBride offers a message of hope found in a forest full of secrets and monsters. Whimsy is a teenage girl receiving treatment in a mental hospital when she meets a boy named Faerry. Both of them realize they are magical beings battling secrets from a shared past they are unable to fully remember. Amber Mcbride talks to us about writing this novel for those who may find it hard to get through the darkness of life, her endearing relationship with her grandmother, and we see if she is ready to break the bank for a pair of Beyonce tickets. 

Pink and blue, step to the side. There is a new color in town! What Does Brown Mean to You? is the debut children's picture book from educator Ron Grady. In this book, we meet Benny, a little boy talking about different ways the color brown is explored and celebrated throughout his life. From Benny's beautiful brown skin to the color of his grandmother's coffee, the color brown shines throughout this delightful story.  Ron Grady joins us to talk about how his career as a nature preschool teacher and his love for drawing brought about this much-needed story. We also speak about the ways parents can be encouraged to have conversations with their little ones about race and ethnicity. 

Jonathan Escoffery's stellar debut If I Survive You takes the short story genre and turns it on its axis to show the multidimensional underbelly of racism, generational discord, and the toll that a series of bad luck takes on the family dynamic. Escoffery presents a family that has migrated to South Florida to forgo political unrest in Jamaica to make a life in the "land of possibility." The story begins with its center on the youngest American-born child, Trelawny, who has found himself homeless and attempts to find financial freedom by taking unusual jobs on Craigslist. Jonathan Escoffery joins us on the podcast to talk about his personal experiences living in Miami and why readers must allow for space for imagination to thrive within a story. 

This week on the Vulgar Geniuses Podcast, we get to sit down with Cree Myles, the culture creator and influencer who has built a life sharing her love of Black literature. As the official curator of Penguin Random House's Instagram account, ALL WAYS BLACK, Cree uses creative and innovative ways to celebrate and highlight Black writers. We talk to Cree about her bookstagram origin story, the one thing she will never compromise herself on, and what it is like to be a part of the all-mighty infamous Libra collective. 

Yuyi Morales has captivated children for over 20 years with her vibrant illustrations and beautiful stories. Her most recent release, Bright Star, is a moving story about a young fawn living with her mother in a desert borderland. As the fawn is confronted with obstacles, its mother reassures her to continue in spite of the hardships that arise. 

We spoke to Yuyi about her art exhibit Soñadora previously on tour at the Orlando Museum of Art, which closed this past December. She also talked about how a trip to the library with her son sparked an entire career that blended her love for art, storytelling, and the rich culture and history of her country Mexico. 

The bumper may be dragging, and the engine may be on fire, but we made it to the end of a rollercoaster ride of a year. Most importantly, we ended the year with you! Grab a glass of champagne, sit back, and toast the end of 2022 as we look to see if the resolutions we made in 2021 actually happened and which guest made our top 10 favorite podcasts of the year!  

Morgan Talty's debut, Night of the Living Rez, is a short story collection set in Maine within the community of the Panawahpskek (Penobscot) Nation. The stories focus on David as a young boy adjusting to living on the reservation to him as an adult figuring out life in a community reeling with the aftermath of drug addiction. Talty flawlessly uses time and death to tell a story about family, relationships, and what is lost and found while aging. 

We talked to Talty about how he had no interest in reading in his youth, only to become a best-selling author, writing stories that don't center on the white gaze, and his favorite show to binge to help him unwind after a long day of work. 

JP Perez & Jeremy Ocampo bring excitement and magic to children and adults that visit the wonderful world of Walt Disney every day with their beautiful artwork. They helped to design the newest nighttime show, Enchantment, to commemorate Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom's 50th anniversary. In the stage show Finding Nemo: The Big Blue and Beyond, spectators can also view Ocampo's magnificent illustrations.

In this episode, we talk about the power of Filipino representation in powerful places, which superhero would be the best one to be Filipino, and Dennie presses them to confess to naming their favorite Tito and Tita.

Journalist, and author, Albert Samaha talks to us about his book Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family's Fate. Samaha takes his family's immigration stories and intertwines them with the fraught history of colonization in the Phillippines. His conversations with family members reveal the oppressive and violent chokehold on a nation that began with Spain and continued to flourish in the hands of the United States. 

Samaha spoke to us in September prior to the paperback release of Concepcion and discussed the depth in which colonization has done everything in its power to erase the history of a people and his mission to gather up the stories of his family and ancestors so that the world may know the truth. 

In 1995 OutKast won the Source Award for Best New Group. This win prompted boos from the crowd, but it also signaled to the world that Big Boi and André3000 had just ushered in a wave of music that would change the musical landscape for years to come. Dr. Regina N. Bradley's Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South details how music, literature, and film takes a critical eye to the post-civil-rights movement rule book and the expectations for those raised in the 80s and 90s.  

Dr. Bradley talks to us about the song that ultimately pulled her into the OutKast universe, her refusal to place whiteness in conversation with Black Southern literature, and how a Google hangout with her friends sparked the beginnings of this brilliant book. 

Marriage of a Thousand Lies author SJ Sindu returns to the Vulgar Geniuses Podcast with their sophomore novel, Blue-Skinned Gods. In India, people make pilgrimages to an ashram to visit Kalki, a Tamil child born with blue skin believed to be the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. His parents make money from the blessings and miracles Kalki grants to the believers, but he soon doubts his divinity as he watches his relationships fall apart. 

Sindu shares with us the dynamics of intertwining religious history with gender and sexuality, their newfound adventure after being in lockdown during the start of the pandemic, and whatever became of their beer-making aspirations.

We are celebrating a monumental milestone with a special episode of the Vulgar Geniuses Podcast. For our 100th show, we sit down with New York Times bestselling novelist Celeste Ng as we talk about her recent book, Our Missing Hearts. 

Bird Gardner is a 12-year-old boy who lives alone with his father after having their lives suddenly interrupted years prior when his mother, Margaret, a Chinese-American poet, is snatched away from their home. Book banning and kidnapping children from the homes of dissidents is the norm as America has shifted into a time of dystopian restlessness to maintain "American Culture" after economic peril and violence befall the nation. 

We speak with Ng about the similarities in her novel to the outside world, her hobby that helps her to unwind, and an item she was able to take from the set of Little Fires Everywhere. 

LARK & KASIM START A REVOLUTION is the recent release from bestselling author Kacen Callender. Lark is a Black, queer, nonbinary, and neurodivergent teen who hopes to snag thousands of Twitter followers and a book deal for an unfinished novel. Kasim accidentally uses Lark's phone to send tweets from their account confessing unrequited love. When they go viral, Lark takes credit for the tweets and uses them to their advantage to get a date with their crush. However, the tweets Kasim made were all about his love for Lark. 

Stay with us as we speak with Kacen speaks about why they write books for the young and marginalized, their love for art, and the peace found in detaching themselves from social media. 

Belinda Huijuan Tang's A Map for the Missing is a story that centers around the possibilities of what could have been as it converges with the limitations of a family and country in turmoil during the Cultural Revolution in China. Family secrets, unrequited love, and a father's sudden disappearance are ingredients that make this debut novel an unforgettable tale.

We speak with Belinda about what is lost when discussing the immigration story and the gaps formed when children are not raised in the country of their parent's birth. She reveals the advice given that was instrumental to the formation of her novel, and how a night of drinking and confession making pushed her into writing this epic story.

My Monticello is an ingenious and vividly written novella from debut author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. She brings all our fears and anxieties to the reading table and asks that we hold them and look at them from all angles. Such as in her story "Buying A House Ahead of the Apocalypse," where a mother makes a list of things she will need when she considers what will be lost during the end of the world. Jocelyn joins us on the show to discuss how the violent Unite the Right white supremacist rally inspired her titled story. We also chat about how her opening story Control Negro made it into the hands of Roxane Gay and read from the lips of the Lit King himself, Levar Burton. 

Elisa A. Bonnin masterfully builds worlds where fantasy and Filipino culture coexist in her debut novel Dauntless.  We follow Seri as she vows to help protect her people from the Beasts that hide in the trees that Seri calls home.  Seri soon discovers that her people are not the only ones to exist in the world, as she meets Tsana. They team up to help keep their nations from entering into a deadly war. We speak with Elisa about the importance of pulling away from the European perspective and centering stories through a Filipino lens featuring queer characters, how her love of fantasy began, and how she unwinds after a long hard day with Japanese sword-fighting.

Tomas Q. Morin's LET ME COUNT THE WAYS is a memoir that will sit with readers long after they close the book. Morin dives deep down into his childhood to bring to the surface key moments of retrospection into the life he lived as he watched his family wrestle with his father's drug addiction and the beginnings of Morin's obsessive-compulsive disorder. We talk with Morin about stepping into a space of vulnerability and sharing family memories with the public, a glimpse into fatherhood, and he gets real about his feelings about Batman, wrestling, and the best time to have Frito pie. 

There is no denying that Julie Tieu loves writing about love, and it definitely shows in her sophomore novel CIRCLING BACK TO YOU. Julie joins us on the podcast to talk about how she found her way in the world of all things rom-com. Julie introduces us to Candice and Matt, the ultimate "will they/won't they" couple working in the real estate business. Their friendship blooms into an office romance, but when climbing the professional ladder proves to be a roadblock from love, they must figure out what they are willing to  sacrifice and keep.

Carlos Allende's newest novel, Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love, is a  comedic thriller from Red Hen Press full of scams and shenanigans. Jignesh is an overweight gay Indian man involved in embezzling money from his job. Everything seems to be going as planned until he accidentally murders a coworker. He hides the body in a deep freezer purchased from Charlie, a man he met on a dating site. But things go haywire when Charlie finds out his secret, and more bodies begin to drop. Carlos talks to us about the real-life inspiration behind this story, creating characters that are messy, dislikable, and lovable. 

We jump off National Hispanic Heritage Month with debut author Sonora Reyes. They join us to chat about their bestselling young adult novel, The Lesbiana's Guide To Catholic School, which has recently found its way on the 2022 National Book Award Longlist for Young Readers. Sonora Reyes' novel brings readers into the life of 17-year-old Yamilet Flores. After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend, Yami transfers to a private Catholic school where she vows never to fall in love and keep her mother from finding out the truth. 

Elaine Hsieh Chou joins us to talk about her debut novel DISORIENTATION an interwoven satire that grapples with the ever-present danger Asian Americans face when racism rears its ugly head in the world of academia. Ph.D. hopeful Ingrid Yang is beginning to unravel as she struggles with writing her dissertation on the late Chinese poet Xiao-Wen Chou. A clue from the library's archive helps her to uncover that Xiao-Wen Chou is not dead, nor is he Asian, but rather a white man living his days in retirement after using yellowface as a tool to gain literary success for 35 years. 

If you have a shared love for murder mystery podcasts and word games, then this episode is just the one you've been waiting for. We travel across the world for our conversation with author Hanna Alkaf to discuss her novel QUEEN OF TILES. Hanna drops us into the city of Kuala Lumpur a year after the mysterious death of Najwa's best friend and Scrabble Champ, Trina Lowe. Najwa is ready to resume her life, but as secrets are revealed and lies are told, she must solve the mystery of her friend's death or face being blamed for it. 

Unable to make waves in his acting career, David Crownson took his mother's advice, boarded a plane, and headed to Ghana to press the reset button. Three months later, after binging on Crouching Tiger, Hidden, Dragon, and Buffy, HARRIET TUBMAN DEMON SLAYER was born. This series from Kingwood Comics fuses history and fantasy as Harriet Tubman frees enslaved black men and women from the clutches of demons, vampires, and slavery. David talks to us about teaming up with Insecure producer Prentice Penny to bring his story to life under Disney's Onyx Collective and the overwhelming power behind representation.

In Bethany C. Morrow's newest novel CHERISH FARRAH the calls are coming from inside the house, and so are the screams. Our fiction pick for July will keep you cool for the rest of summer as it sends chills down your spine days after you've read the last sentence. Farrah Turner is a 17-year-old Black girl who plays a game of dominance as she manipulates her way into the home of Cherrish Whitman, best friend and adopted daughter of a wealthy, white family. But soon, everything she knew begins to unravel, and motives are soon revealed.

Sex, desire, and autonomy drip from the pages of our guest author, Alyssa Songsiridej's debut novel, LITTLE RABBIT. We explore this body of work as she reveals to us how she longed to bring forth a novel where female characters allowed themselves to be pulled under by their desire without being damaged by their male love interest. 

A 30 year-old queer and burgeoning writer begins to unearth the many aspects of her sexuality when she becomes involved in a sexual relationship with a choreographer in his 50s. This awakening collides with resistance from her roommate's expectations and questions of loyalty and friendship with Rabbit's newly drawn boundaries. 

Candice Iloh’s sophomore novel BREAK THIS HOUSE gifts, readers, with Yaminah, a teenager attempting to balance the life she has been rebuilding since she and her father moved from their hometown of Obsidian, MI., to Brooklyn, NY. In an attempt to maintain her close relationships, Yaminah is suddenly struck with news that leaves her blindsided and reeling from grief. Join us on this next episode as we talk with Candice about their craft of writing young adult fiction to embody the true essence and voice of teenagers, their desire to write characters that are imperfect, and approaches the issues of grief and addiction that gives space for readers to gain perspective about life's lessons.