You hope heaven is a jazz club. You desire that a blues song shall lift your spirit to the skies when life escapes your body. So you may flow for all of eternity to the sweet tune of black fingers climbing and crashing with the valves of their trumpet. …

This week’s blog is inspired by You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi and all the lovely food descriptions in the book. But also, this comes from a personal place — hint all the self-inserts — of coping with my anxiety. …

This blog post was supposed to come out the week that Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan was released. But I could not bring myself to write it due to my constant battle with anxiety, which stifled my creative spirit. The end of the semester affected my mental health…

“Publishing in the way that I have perhaps makes me an author, but it didn’t make me a writer,” the inspirational, motivating words flowed from Tracy Deonn’s mouth during her Bloodmarked Release Day event in Chapel Hill. To say it was an honor to be in the same space as…

“What are you gonna do when you can no longer seek academic validation?” my 11th-grade English teacher asked me during a random conversation. Where this man got the audacity to ask such a question, I don’t know. I’m more than sure he meant it as a joke. …

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson did so many things to my mind and soul. Some things I am still processing and can’t even speak on, but I can tell you that I’ve never been more appreciative of my black forefathers and mothers. The same week that Nelson joined our…

A Journey of Writing 153,000 words. I’m going to say that again… 153,000 words. When I finished my first draft, I knew I had written a lot. But my god, I didn’t realize it was actually that long. …

There need to be more imperfect black girls in books. Unapologetically messy, angry, sad, or whatever they want to be while expressing themselves in any way they desire. As human beings, we are inherently imperfect. It is what it is. But as black women, society says we can’t be that…

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved stories. Whether that was reading books, watching tv shows and movies, or the stories I would make up in my head but never write down. They lived in my head rent-free, and I never wanted that to change. …