Yuri Kochiyama was a revolutionary! The legacy of her life's work as a civil rights activist has been beautifully documented in a children's picture book written by Kai Naima Williams, Harlem-born poet, artist, and Yuri's great-granddaughter. The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movements walks readers through her origin story of becoming one of the country's most important advocators for Asian American rights. In our interview with Kai, she pinpoints the early...

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...

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...

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...

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 f**k 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...