Thank you for coming to my Sub Stack

It’s 2025! The 21st century can officially rent a car! Happy 25 years, 21st century. I never believed Y2K was gonna be a thing anyway.

Birthday conspicuity. Wow, that’s a word??

Though I don’t update this part of my website much, lots has been happening! And I should know—I have a Google alert on my name! (Thank you, Google, yes, I’m aware of the things I actually wrote and published). My favorite part of interviewing people is getting to learn about interesting lives and careers. Recently, I talked to opera singer turned restaurateur Alexander Smalls for Kinfolk and legendary jazz musician, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington (pg. 42) for the NYC Winter Jazzfest program guide about their work as artists, mentors, and cultural workers.

I also (yet again) was on a podcast talking about Mariah Carey. PLEASE. Let me talk about the 80 different remixes of “My All” at some point, O giant media landscape.

I’m starting to share more on my Substack, both roundups like this one and original writing, so subscribe!

My episode of the 'Scamfluencers' podcast out now!

I wrote the script for an episode of Scamfluencers, a Wondery podcast about the weird new nexus of scammers with an influencer-level of reach, and therefore, scammees. My episode, “Brooklyn’s Bling Bishop,” is about viral sensation and pastor (pastor?) Lamor Whitehead, most famous for getting robbed (“robbed?”) of $1 million worth of jewelry during his live-streamed church service last summer. And also for being besties with NYC Mayor Eric Adams. As a lover of scams, all things New York, Black, & NYC government AND podcasts, this project was a delight!

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

My piece 'Blue Daniel' published in New Orleans Review / M3 Anthology

So excited to share that my personal essay “Blue Daniel” is now up at the New Orleans Review, issue 49, via Loyola University! It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. ENJOY.

I’m also excited to announce that the Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M3) Anthology came out last month! I served as Developmental Editor, guiding the 12 musicians who were part of the most recent cohort through shaping their essays, poems, and other work. They wrote about music and gender issues, and so much more. I also interviewed the phenomenal bassist, sitarist, and storyteller Shanta Nurullah, who was M3’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2022.

Check out the anthology here!

Black Ladies Doing Things: Lena Waithe and Grace Mahary

I talked to showrunner (in multiple senses of the word) Lena Waithe for Mic about her work mentoring up-and-coming people in the business and how she deals with controversy and critique…! Read here.

Also interviewed model and sommelier Grace Mahary for Kinfolk about her many different interests and projects, including bringing sustainable energy to East Africa and supporting winemakers and lovers of color. Read that one here (click through the link at the bottom).

Ringer Roundup

Oh, look—it’s me doing what I do best: talking about Black lady stuff in a few (belated) pieces over at The Ringer.

The Top 100 Beyonce Songs. In conjunction with the release of Black Is King, I ranked Ms. Knowles’ top 100 solo songs and only got lightly dragged on Twitter.

Getting to the Meaning of Mariah Carey. In my third (!) piece about my favorite diva, I dug into her years of misrepresentation and feeling misunderstood, which she’s sought to rectify through her delicious new memoir.

60 Songs That Explain the 90s: “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Now a certifiable Mariah expert, I was a guest on Rob Harvilla’s podcast to talk about her most famous, most seasonally ubiquitous song—and even coined the term “Mariah Justice Warrior”—a thing I am not (yet).

"This'll be the realest piece I ever wrote"

I was dee-lighted to write and publish this new piece on Jeezy’s debut album Let’s Get It. It’s about HBCU life, the nascent days of snap music, and being blissfully, ignorantly young. It’s for The Believer’s corona-inspired Distancing series, on the places and times music takes us. For me, that’s 2005, my freshman year at Spelman, pre-ubiquity of social media, smartphones and unlimited access to everything everywhere always. I’m not that old, but that was a special, different time. Please read and share!

Click for a sneak peek at what I looked like at 18 ( :

I've been awarded a 2020 Meret Grant from The Freya Project!

Excited to share that I am one of 5 recipients of this year’s Meret Grant from the Freya Project! Freya is a literary reading series which raises money for small, under-funded organizations, and supports the work of women and non-binary writers. The very fancy and talented Chelsea Bieker, Naima Coster, Aja Gabel, and Trish Nelson also received awards. The grant is named after the Egyptian goddess of rejoicing, so…rejoice!

More info here.

The Notorious LPW

Meet Lindsay Peoples Wagner, the unapologetically Black editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, and youngest EIC in Condé Nast history. For the spring issue of Kinfolk, she and I talked about change, being old at 29, and making the fashion world a more inclusive space for all bodies.