In today’s episode, Jesmyn Ward reads from her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which is at once a bildungsroman, a ghost story, an epic, and a road novel. In portraying the suck of Parchman Prison on the generations of one Mississippi family, Ward deftly explores how the real threat of incarceration haunts these psyches and, in turn, these familial relationships. In this moving conversation, Ward reflects on living with grief, on listening for communications from beyond our immediate...

Our guest, Erika Sánchez, reads from her masterful debut young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. Sánchez's writing is unflinching in its reckoning with teenage pain, while also somehow making you laugh out loud. This conversation combines the same qualities, returning bravely to humor between ventures into serious terrain like the stigma attached to mental health struggles in the Latinx community, and the dark places a writer needs to go in her own mind to get despair right...

Today's bonus episode of The Freedom Takes is a collaboration with the National Book Foundation. Over the last three years, the foundation's Literature for Justice committees have curated thought-provoking reading lists on the topic of mass incarceration. Dwayne is a former committee member and a selected author. The Foundation has partnered with the Million Book Project to send Literature for Justice titles to reading groups in prisons and juvenile detention centers nationwide. On today's...

Randall Horton is the author of a memoir and four powerful poetry collections, including his most recent #289-128 – once his state Department of Corrections number, now reclaimed for his art. The collection explores the experience of imprisonment, remembers the voices and yearnings of people inside, and pushes back against hollow language about mass incarceration. On the show, he talks about the power in taking back for poetry's purposes the state number that followed and follows him, pays...

It was a joy to have Natalie Diaz on the show, drawing vital connections between basketball, dance, poetry, discovery and love. How to let poetry belong to more people; how writing can clarify "what you mean, and what you want"; how loving is sometimes easier on the page -- these are among the themes of our conversation with Diaz. She also shares about the creation of her latest collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, touches on her private work of language revitalization, and models speaking of...

We recorded this interview with Deesha Philyaw shortly after she found out that her debut collection of short stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, had won the Story Prize (2020/2021). We spoke with her about these stories and their masterfully readable exploration of the intersection of Black women, sex, and church; writing about home when you've made home elsewhere; and how to navigate consent issues that arise when writing about your children.

Celebrated author, musician, and screenwriter James McBride, speaks directly to our primary audience -- people in prison -- about moving past regret in life, finding freedom in books, claiming power in knowledge. He also offers a micro-lesson on the varying ways to tell a story -- from his piano bench. McBride is the author of a number of celebrated books, including The Good Lord Bird, which won the National Book Award for Fiction and was adapted into a limited series on Showtime starring...

Founder of the Million Book Project Reginald Dwayne Betts takes a turn as interviewee, responding to guest-host Rion Amilcar Scott about his early memories as a reader, the social currency of literature in prison, and his commitment to working on multiple fronts to get people free.

Miriam Toews is the best-selling and award-winning author of eight books, including her most recent work, Women Talking -- the heartbreaking, philosophical, and funny account of female crime victims defining justice for themselves. It is both a good story, and the kind of good story that gets into the marrow of readers: the kind for which Toews is renowned. On today's show, Toews discusses the making of Women Talking, the challenges of leaving but continuing to love her former Mennonite...

Rion Amilcar Scott is an award-winning writer who turns a short story into deep glimpses inside the souls of Black folks. Over two collections of stories, Insurrections and The World Does Not Require You, Scott has created a world-- literally -- in the Cross River of his invention: a spot in Maryland where a triumphant slave rebellion led to the founding of a city. And in creating that world, he has fashioned a wild collection of indelible characters and cutting stories.

Our host Reginald Dwayne Betts chops it up with Jason Reynolds, a beloved author of young adult fiction and poetry. Jason has won all the prizes that dope writers get, including the Kirkus Prize and the Coretta Scott King Honor. In the inaugural episode of The Freedom Takes, Dwayne and Jason discuss their common roots in PG County, Maryland; the importance of literature in the lives of young people; and Jason’s book Long Way Down, of which the Million Book Project has sent 900 copies to...