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First Draft Episode #339: Ibi Zoboi
Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times bestselling author of National Book Award Finalist American Street, Pride, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich and co-author with prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of Punching the Air. She joins us to talk about her first work of non-fiction Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler.
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Links to Topics Mentioned In This Episode:
Blubber by Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Pet Cemetery by Stephen King
Musician Erykah Badu
Rapper and actor Common
Multi-hyphenate artist Saul Williams
Musician Sun Ra
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin
Jane Austen, author of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility
Brontë Sisters (Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Michelle Nichols as Uhura in Star Trek
Guion S. Bluford, first Black astronaut
Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor, who coined the term African Futurism
The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and Clarion West Writers Workshop
Dark Matter: Writing the Bones, edited by by Sheree Renée Thomas
Ayana Gray, debut author of Beasts of Prey (hear her First Draft episode here)
Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah
The Matrix (movie)
Blade Runner (movie)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Lord of the Flies by William Goldman
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’engle
Gregor the Overlander (The Underland Chronicles #1) by Suzanne Collins
ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Stacy Whitman, publisher of Tu Books
Alessandra Balzer, v-p/co-publisher of Balzer + Bray
Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, The Dew Breaker, and Brother, I’m Dying
Ted Chiang, author of Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation
N.K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season, The City We Became, How Long Til Black Future Month, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and more
Possessing the Secrets of Joy by Alice Walker
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
Audre Lorde, poet and writer, known for Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography
Angela Y. Davis, activist, scholar, and author known for Women, Race & Class, Are Prisons Obsolete, Freedom is a Constant Struggle and more
bell hooks, feminist icon known for All About Love: New Visions, and When Angels Speak of Love
Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Path by Stephanie Hemphill
Carver: a Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
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Jacqueline Woodson, 2020 MacArthur Genius fellow, National Book Award winner, Newberry, Caldecott, and Coretta Scott King winner, former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brown Girl Dreaming, Red at the Bone, Another Brooklyn, Before the Ever After and many, many more. She joins us to talk about her picture books with Rafael López, The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly. Hear her First Draft interview here.
Kekla Magoon, award-winning author of many novels and nonfiction books for kids and teens, including How It Went Down, The Season of Styx Malone, and her newest, Revolution In Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People. Hear her First Draft interview here.
Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction, the CILIP Carnegie Medal, and the Boston Globe-Hornbook Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land. Hear her First Draft interview here.
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