Black Writers Read

Kiss My Art & the Living Memoir featuring Tiriq Rashad

Send us a textThis 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 MusicFind Tiriq Rashad on Instagram: @tiriq_rashadFind Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersreadFind Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/Support Black Writers Read on PatreonSupport the show

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

Send us a textThis 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_synnikaFind Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersreadFind Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/Support Black Writers Read on PatreonSupport the show

Igniting New Beginnings featuring Damon Moore

Send us a textThis 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/986XdtJFind Damon on Instagram and TikTok at iamdamonmoore. Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersreadFind Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/Support Black Writers Read on PatreonSupport the show

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

Send us a textThis 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-seriesFind Tiffany on Instagram: @thriveandrisewithtiffanyFind Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersreadFind Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/Support Black Writers Read on PatreonSupport the show

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

Send us a textThis 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: @shondabuchananFollow Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersreadFind Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/ Support Black Writers Read on PatreonSupport the show