Try free for 30 days
-
Letters to a Writer of Colour
- Narrated by: Deepa Anappara, Taymour Soomro, full cast
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $26.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Craft and Conscience
- How to Write About Social Issues
- By: Kavita Das
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose which makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Kavita Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social justice lens.
-
This Is the Honey
- An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets
- By: Kwame Alexander
- Narrated by: Mahogany L. Brown, Joel Damany Steingold
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout.
-
Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition)
- A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death.
-
-
Amazing story
- By RUTH on 18-11-2023
-
Wonderbook (Revised and Expanded)
- The Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
- By: Jeff VanderMeer
- Narrated by: Ryan Burke, Tanya Eby, Adam Verner
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wonderbook has become the definitive guide to writing science fiction and fantasy by offering an accessible, example-rich approach that emphasizes the importance of playfulness as well as pragmatism. The book features sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names working in the field today, including George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, and Karen Joy Fowler. For the fifth anniversary of the original publication, Jeff VanderMeer has added writing exercises, creating the ultimate volume of inspiring advice.
-
Black Women Writers at Work
- By: Claudia Tate - editor
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.
-
Be Holding
- A Poem
- By: Ross Gay
- Narrated by: Ross Gay
- Length: 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Be Holding is a love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving—known as Dr. J—who dominated courts in the 1970s and ‘80s as a small forward for the Philadelphia ‘76ers. But this book-length poem is more than just an ode to a magnificent athlete. Through a kind of lyric research, or lyric meditation, Ross Gay connects Dr. J’s famously impossible move from the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to pick-up basketball and the flying Igbo and the Middle Passage, to photography and surveillance and state violence, to music and personal histories of flight and familial love.
-
Craft and Conscience
- How to Write About Social Issues
- By: Kavita Das
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose which makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Kavita Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social justice lens.
-
This Is the Honey
- An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets
- By: Kwame Alexander
- Narrated by: Mahogany L. Brown, Joel Damany Steingold
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout.
-
Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition)
- A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death.
-
-
Amazing story
- By RUTH on 18-11-2023
-
Wonderbook (Revised and Expanded)
- The Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
- By: Jeff VanderMeer
- Narrated by: Ryan Burke, Tanya Eby, Adam Verner
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wonderbook has become the definitive guide to writing science fiction and fantasy by offering an accessible, example-rich approach that emphasizes the importance of playfulness as well as pragmatism. The book features sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names working in the field today, including George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, and Karen Joy Fowler. For the fifth anniversary of the original publication, Jeff VanderMeer has added writing exercises, creating the ultimate volume of inspiring advice.
-
Black Women Writers at Work
- By: Claudia Tate - editor
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.
-
Be Holding
- A Poem
- By: Ross Gay
- Narrated by: Ross Gay
- Length: 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Be Holding is a love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving—known as Dr. J—who dominated courts in the 1970s and ‘80s as a small forward for the Philadelphia ‘76ers. But this book-length poem is more than just an ode to a magnificent athlete. Through a kind of lyric research, or lyric meditation, Ross Gay connects Dr. J’s famously impossible move from the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to pick-up basketball and the flying Igbo and the Middle Passage, to photography and surveillance and state violence, to music and personal histories of flight and familial love.
Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Filled with empathy and wisdom, personal experiences and creative inspiration, this is a vital collection of essays on the power of literature and the craft of writing from an international array of writers of colour.
What if we reconsidered our assumptions about how fiction should be written? And can we then apply our discoveries to both what we read and how we read? This book explores these questions and encourages us into a more inclusive conversation about storytelling, featuring:
• Taymour Soomro on resisting rigid stories about who you are
• Madeleine Thien on how writing builds the room in which it can exist
• Amitava Kumar on why authenticity isn't a license we carry in our wallets
• Tahmima Anam on giving herself permission to be funny
• Ingrid Rojas Contreras on the bodily challenge of writing about trauma
• Zeyn Joukhadar on queering English and the power of refusing to translate ourselves
• Kiese Laymon on hearing that no one wants to read the story that you want to write
• Deepa Anappara on writing even through conditions that impede the creation of art
Plus essays from Tiphanie Yanique, Xiaolu Guo, Jamil Jan Kochai, Vida Cruz-Borja, Femi Kayode, Nadifa Mohamed in conversation with Leila Aboulela, Myriam Gurba, Mohammed Hanif and Sharlene Teo.
Read by Deepa Anaparra, Taymour Soomro, Madeleine Thien, Amitava Kumar, Tahmima Anam, Tiphanie Yanique, Marisol Ramirez, Cindy Kay, Zeyn Joukhadar, Jamil Jan Kochai, Nic Villasenor, Cary Hite, Simone McIntyre, Susan Nezami, Carolina Hoyos, Aaron Goodson, Mohammed Hanif and Mirai.
Critic Reviews
"Electric essays that speak to the experience of writing from the periphery...a guide, a comfort, and a call all at once." (Laila Lalami, author of Conditional Citizens)
"The problem of the color line, as WEB Du Bois called it, has existed in literature and literary criticism as much as social and geopolitical realms, and systematic neglect by publishers, critics and readers has only exacerbated it. Excavating long-buried experiences of rejection, incomprehension and misunderstanding, Letters to a Writer of Colour defines the problem with precision and passion, and also outlines ways to transcend it." (Pankaj Mishra)
"I knew I would love this book as soon as I laid eyes on the title and the list of contributors, and it didn't disappoint - far from it. These essays provide so much wisdom and warmth, giving us a sense of restoration, of community. They take a refreshingly holistic view of the craft and balance real technical insight with deeply gentle humanity." (Okechukwu Nzelu, author of Here Again Now)