The Greatest 30 Years of Black Men Writing

A short case for the greatest span of writing by Black men. 

Script by Howard Rambsy II 

Editing by Elizabeth Cali 

Production design by Nicole Dixon 

Voiceover by Kassandra Timm

 

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Related: 

• The Greatest 30 Years of Black Men's Writing (podcast episode)

• Black men writers and creativity, 1995 - 2016

• A checklist of videos & whiteboard animations

The Greatest 30 Years of Black Men's Writing

A brief take on the extraordinary literary achievements of Black men writers from1995 to 2024, a period marked by serious, comical, and fascinating compositions.

Script by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm

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Related: 

• The Greatest 30 Years of Black Men Writing (video)

• Black men writers and creativity, 1995 - 2016

• Episodes of Remarkable Receptions

Blogging about poetry in December 2024

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• December 28: From Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka to C. Liegh McInnis and others

• December 28: The year in African American poetry, 2024

• December 9: Coverage of Nikki Giovanni's passing

• December 1: Blogging about Poetry in November 2024

From Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka to C. Liegh McInnis and others

I'm still not ready to properly produce a remembrance of Nikki Giovanni. We lost her on December 9, and I've been thinking of her and ways to, I don't know, really show how much she's meant to me and the work I do. 

In the meantime, I was reading various tributes to Giovanni, including one that writer C. Liegh McInnis produced and shared on his newsletter. He opened noting that he discovered Black Arts era writing "around the age of eleven or twelve, reading my pop’s copies of Negro Digest and Black World." Following leads from there is where he eventually discovered Giovanni. 

It's interesting to consider that during the 1980s, McInnis began thinking about the blend of arts and activism developed and displayed by Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Haki Madhubuti and others during the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s when I was living in Mississippi, McInnis was demonstrating modes of that arts & activism in his work and projects.

So we're talking about passing on approaches to arts activism from Giovanni and Baraka to McInnis and others. That transference was facilitated by "copies of Negro Digest and Black World," books, poetry readings, word-of-mouth, newsletters, and so forth. 

There's more to say on all of this, but for now, I just wanted to take note. 

Related 

• A Notebook on Nikki Giovanni

• A Notebook on Amiri Baraka

• A Notebook on C. Liegh McInnis

The year in African American poetry, 2024

March: Evie Shockley awarded the Shelley Memorial Award winner

March: Jacqui Germain wins Kate Tufts Discovery Award

August: Marissa Davis and marion eames white awarded Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships.

December: Nikki Giovanni dies on the 9th. 

December: Brandon Kilbourne wins Cave Canem Prize

Related: 

• Year in African American poetry entries

Reflection on reaching 200 podcast episodes

We somehow did it: produced 200 episodes our podcast Remarkable Receptions. 

We launched our first episodes on June 28, 2022, and we posted episode 200 on December 16, 2024. My colleague Elizabeth Cali served as my trusted co-editor, taking a close look at all 200 episodes. 

We had several different guest contributors. While our focus was primarily African American novels and novelists, we ended up touching on a variety of topics, including comic books, Black voice actors and audiobooks, film and casting, literary data work, and on and on. 

I produced this project with a deep sense of purpose. I realized that increasing numbers of audiences were acquiring knowledge through audio and in particular through podcasts. There's this saying that "everybody has a podcast." But I realized that hard any of the people in everybody specialized in African American literary studies. 

Our field's presence in podcasting is minimal to non-existent. So I dived in with the feeling that I was assisting make our field more visible audible. 

I was fortunate to have my colleague Cali as a sounding board. She and I were about 8 years into a long-running conversation about African American literary studies when I began developing the idea for the podcast. The variety of the topics paralleled the trajectory of our conversations. 

We also had help from a range of colleagues in the field and beyond. I asked several different colleagues in the field to contribute episodes related to their expertise. I co-teach a class on comic books and diversity with Stephyn Phillips, so I invited him to contribute episode scripts. 

Early on in the process, I somehow encountered a really talented voice artist Kassandra Timm. She ended up narrating almost all of our episodes. She turned in really high quality audio that was always read energetically and thoughtfully.  

The project was made possible by a Mellon Foundation grant. There's no way that we could've produced this project and had this much assistance without that funding. So I'm really grateful. I'm also glad I got a chance to see what was possible. 

You can check out the episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or here on the site. You can check out the episodes by category here:

• Novels and Novelists

• Toni Morrison 

• Comic books and Graphic Novels

• Black voice actors and audiobooks

• Film, Casting, and Novel adaptations

• Groups of Black Writers

• Black Women Writers

• Various topics

• Literary Data Work

You can also check out the episodes on our site, where it's possible to view items using a search.

Related

• Notes on the production of Remarkable Receptions 

Episodes on Representations of Slavery

• Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad – Howard Rambsy II and Elizabeth Cali

• Toni Morrison's Beloved – Courtney Thorsson

• The Origins of Neo-slave Narrative – Howard Rambsy II

• Born in Blackness and São Tomé – Howard Rambsy II

• Representations of Slavery as Creative Inspiration – Howard Rambsy II

• Playful Representations of Slavery – Howard Rambsy II

• James as a Neo-Slave Narrative – Howard Rambsy II

Related:

• Episodes of Remarkable Receptions

• Episodes by topics and categories of Remarkable Receptions

• Notes on the production of Remarkable Receptions

Terms for novels by Black writers

A brief on terms used to describe book-length fictional works by U.S.-born Black writers. 

Script by Howard Rambsy II 

Voiceover Kassandra Timm 

Whiteboard animation Sierra Taylor

 

  Related

• A checklist of videos & whiteboard animations