One thing about me that many people don’t know is that one of the things I’ve been doing since the beginning of 2020 is working with the If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) podcast, which I helped co-found. I love doing this because I get to talk with such interesting people! Here’s the episodes from 2024 where I co-interviewed with the excellent Alan Bailey, who is the reason the podcast keeps going.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Reading for the Road
Last night in North America for a while. Here’s some of the books I’ve packed onto the Kindle.
You Should Read This: An Appreciation of Maya Angelou
This picture makes me happy. What a well-deserved honor. I first read Maya Angelou at twelve or thirteen, with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was a white Midwestern girl with an academic and a journalist as parents and the world Angelou described was so different from my own experience that it helped me learn early that there were outlooks beyond my own.
Later I’d come to her poetry at a time when my ears were ready to drink it in. Her voice was sharp and observant, outspoken and nuanced all at once. Here’s one of my favorites among her poems, “I Rise.”
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Learning of her death this morning was a blow. She was bold and wonderful and eloquent, all that a poet should be. She spoke about our times and testified to her experience so others could learn from it. I have a special family in her heart, made up of the writers that have shaped me. Chaucer’s there, and Joanna Russ, and so many others. I wish I’d had the chance to meet her in person.
Here’s a recent quote from her I came across this morning and love: The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
I’m glad you’re home, Maya. But oh, those of us still aching for it will miss you.
