theblackbottom

Recipient of the 2012 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography, Reginald Harris is Poetry in the Branches Coordinator and IT Director for Poets House in New York City. His first book, 10 Tongues (Three Conditions Press, 2001) was finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year. Pushcart [...]

Tony Norman began his journalism career at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1988 as a clerk. He was promoted to the Pop Music / Pop Culture beat a year later. In 1996, Norman became a general interest columnist for the PG. In 1999, Norman joined the PG’s editorial board. In 2005-2006, Norman took a year from [...]

Interview by ANDREW GOLDMAN
Published: September 21, 2012
You once wrote that Michael Jackson stopped working with you because he felt threatened by the credit you were getting for his music. Considering he was never able to repeat the success he had with “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad,” how much credit do you deserve?
Well, What [...]

NPR
When NPR Books invited audience members to nominate and vote for their favorite Young Adult novels, more than 75,000 responded. The extraordinary outpouring speaks of the passion connecting the books section and its followers.
But in that response also lie the seeds of a defect, for lack of a better term, in the poll. The resulting [...]

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read~Mary McCleod Bethune
Once you learn how to read, you will be forever free!~Frederick Douglass

REVIEW Natalie Hopkinson, a contributing editor of TheRoot.com, lectures at Georgetown University and directs the Future of the Arts and Society project as a fellow of the Interactivity Foundation. She is the author, [...]

Emberly Vick, otherwise known as Emberly “The Writer,” admits that she passively ignored relentless urges to write for years. Still, whether explaining a concept or conceptualizing herself, she was clearly ordained to write at an early age.
Excelling in state writing tests in elementary, “TheWriter” never considered writing, not even as a hobby, until college. After [...]

Executive Director, Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Assistant Professor, Salem State University. Author of Underlife (CavanKerry Press 2009) and the forthcoming Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press 2014)! Trying to celebrate the extraordinay in the ordinary every day.
Source: Verse Daily
Drinking
A coworker says,
We’re thinking about doing a happy hour.
Wanna join us?
And you recall the night you found your father
slumped over [...]

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read~Mary McCleod Bethune
Once you learn how to read, you will be forever free!~Frederick Douglass

REVIEW Nuruddin Farah was born November 24th 1945 in Baidoa, in what is now the Republic of Somalia. Farah is the author of several novels, including From a Crooked Rib, Links [...]

Ciara Darnise Miller was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. After becoming a Louder than a Bomb poetry slam champion, she performed at various high schools and colleges throughout the United States, including: Lane Tech, North Side Prep, Berkeley High, Chicago Academy of the Arts, MaryMount Manhattan College, Milliken University, and [...]

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read~Mary McCleod Bethune

Once you learn how to read, you will be forever free!~Frederick Douglass
REVIEW John Dramani Mahama is a Ghanaian politician who has been President of Ghana since July 2012. He was the Vice President of Ghana from 2009 to 2012, and he took [...]