The novel follows the life of Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, as she navigates love, family expectations, ambition, and one of the most high-profile and talked-about weddings of the Harlem Renaissance.

While I was reading the book, I took so many notes and when I finished, I was so curious about Yolande and the different relationships in her life, that I knew I had to talk to the author, Tiffany L. Warren about the book — so I’m excited to share our interview today.

One line I can’t stop thinking about:

“Fiction is a window, and it allows you to have empathy for other people in the world.”

Tiffany shared that reading was an escape for her as a child. Books showed her lives beyond her own experiences and helped her understand people whose circumstances looked nothing like hers.

That idea sits at the center of A Harlem Wedding. While the novel introduces readers to well-known historical figures, it also asks us to see them as people navigating love, family expectations, friendship, ambition, and identity. By the end of the book, the history felt less distant because the people at its center felt real.

In this conversation, we discussed so much including:

• How Octavia Butler helped Tiffany realize that she could become a writer herself

• Why Yolande Du Bois because the perfect heroine for a Harlem Renaissance novel and what made her the “it girl” of her era

• The complicated relationship between Yolande and W.E.B. Du Bois, and how his vision for her future shaped her choices

• What years of letters, diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings revealed about the people behind the history

• Why sad love songs often inspire Tiffany’s stories and the song that became the emotional soundtrack for A Harlem Wedding

• How historical fiction allows writers to explore not just what happened, but the deeper question underneath it all: why it happened

If you enjoy historical fiction, the Harlem Renaissance, complicated family relationships or hearing writers talk about their creative process, I think you’ll enjoy conversation.

As always, you can watch or listen to the interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Podcasts, or Pocket Casts.

Listen and/or Watch on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Connect with Tiffany L. Warren

📚 A Harlem Wedding is available wherever books are sold.

🌐 Visit Tiffany at tiffanylwarren.com

📱 Follow Tiffany on Instagram and Threads:

A few more notes for the week:

📺 If you watched the video interview above, you would’ve seen my face when Tiffany mentioned the one song that kept coming to her mind while she was writing was A Harlem Wedding was Vesta Williams “Congratulations.” If you have never heard this song, or watched the video… prepare to clutch your pearls. Also if you can find it, I recommend watching Vesta’s episode of Unsung.

🎧 Speaking with Tiffany about the Harlem Renaissance made me think of my conversation with ReShonda Tate who wrote one of my favorite books of the year, With Love From Harlem. You can listen/watch to that conversation here.

📚 I just finished reading Take What You Can by Naima Coster and I have many thoughts and questions after reading the book. If you like complex stories about friendship, relationship dynamics, and like hearing about good food, I think you’ll enjoy this book.

📚 I also just finished reading Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl by Amena Brown, which is a collection of short essays and I both nodded my head and laughed while reading this book. I saw myself, and so many of my girlfriends reflected in this book. Amena talks about different things like learning how to cook, Waiting to Exhale, how to survive the hair shop, and different pop culture references, including one of my favorite RHOA references: “A white refrigerator? Please put your shoes up. Let’s find you a home.”

🔗 Inside the first official portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama together. I LOVE, LOVE this portrait and all the details that artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby included.

*Quick note: I will be taking a little tiny break from your inbox and will be returning on July 6th with some updates I’m pretty excited about. In the meantime, you can catch me on Substack Notes, Instagram or Threads.

I cannot believe we are just days away from summer, and truthfully, I can wait.

I am not a hot-weather gal at all, so while everyone is making plans to be outside roaming around, my plans consist of early morning farmers market runs, long days reading on my couch under the air conditioner, and dancing around my living room, again in an air-conditioned space.

A few weeks ago, during one of my recurring organizational spirals, I went through my bookshelves and discovered I own 114 books that I either purchased or were gifted and have yet to read. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m still a little flabbergasted by the number.

The discovery reminded me of how I used to convince my mom to take me to Sam Goody or Target every week so I could buy a new CD. It’s probably the same reason I still make playlists today: part of it is supporting artists I love, and part of it is leaving breadcrumbs for a future version of myself. And technically, poetically, the version of me who bought all those books isn’t exactly the version of me who will read them.

As I started putting together a list of the books and albums I’m most excited to spend time with this summer, I noticed a pattern. Nearly everything that I’m truly excited about right now is centered around people taking inventory of their lives in some capacity. Some are trying to find their way back to themselves. Others are trying to figure out what comes after the thing they thought they wanted. Most are looking at the complexities of relationships with others, and a few are standing in the middle of their lives, looking around, and asking a question I’ve been thinking about myself lately: Where do I go from here?

Summer has never felt like a season of reinvention to me (as mentioned your girl is toooooo hot in the summer). It feels more like a season of reflection. The days are longer, the pace slows down just enough, and there is more room to notice what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what still needs attention.

With that in mind, here are the books and albums I’m most excited to spend time with this summer.

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Four books I can’t wait to read

Queenie Is Working on It by Candice Carty-Williams (Out September 8)

I’ll admit it: Queenie worked my nerves the first time around.

It took watching the Hulu adaptation and talking with about the character for me to approach her with a little more empathy. Now Queenie is back, ten years older and theoretically wiser. The fact that she’s still figuring things out is exactly what interests me. So much of adulthood is realizing growth isn’t linear. We don’t become finished versions of ourselves at thirty. We just get different questions to answer.

The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil (Out June 30)

Mara Brock Akil is responsible for some of my favorite television shows. Girlfriends and Being Mary Jane alone are enough reason for me to show up for anything she creates.

What interests me most about this novel, aside from it being her debut, is the premise. It’s described as a deeply moving story that shows when you dig deep enough into the shadows of your life, light can be revealed. It’s a novel of broken lovers, a fractured family, and distant friendships all finding their way back to one another. And one thing about Mara: she knows how to write relationships. Romantic, platonic, familial. I expect this one to be very good.

Skin Contact by Elisa Faison (Out June 23)

After reading They All Fall in Love in the End by Haili Blassingame, I’ve found myself wanting stories that are a little messier and a little more willing to sit in uncertainty.

Skin Contact follows a married couple navigating an open relationship over several years. What draws me to it isn’t necessarily the relationship structure itself, but the larger question underneath it: What happens when the life you’ve built no longer fits the version of yourself you’ve become? That’s a question far bigger than romance.

Take What You Can by Naima Coster (Out July 7)

Friendship. Motherhood. Class. Independence. Family.

Every description I’ve read suggests this novel is interested in the complicated relationships that shape a life. Lately, I’ve found myself gravitating toward stories that ask what happens after the milestones. After adulthood arrives. After you’ve built a life. After you’ve become the person you thought you were supposed to be.

I’m currently reading this book, and I can say so far that it feels like a book that will leave readers with many thoughts about their lives and relationships with others. It’s described as a novel exploring what it means to be a mother when you have none, a sister without blood ties, and a woman in pursuit of the life she wants.

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Three Albums I’m excited to work through

Therapy at the Club by FLO (July 24)

As a gal raised with Destiny’s Child (not literally), I love a girl group, and FLO just does it for me. With their debut album, Access All Areas, they showed that they could harmonize while balancing love songs with songs that have a little attitude, which is the exact combination I tend to love.

Even the title, Therapy at the Club, feels like a perfect encapsulation of where many of us are these days: processing, healing, reflecting, but still wanting to enjoy ourselves in the process. That’s a balance I’m always trying to strike, which probably explains why I’m looking forward to this album so much.

I will admit that I’m a little indifferent to the lead single, but my hopes for the album itself remain very high.

God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops by Rapsody (August 21)

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, seeing this on my list should not be a surprise. Rapsody is my girl and one of my favorite artists. I’ve already played “God Gotta Afro” more times than I’d like to admit. And as a longtime fan, even from her Kooley High days, what I appreciate most about her work is that she never sounds interested in chasing trends. Every project feels like a continuation of a conversation she’s been having with herself for years.

There’s something reassuring about artists who trust their own voice enough to keep evolving it.

Sunshine by Jungle (August 14)

I have been so excited for Jungle’s new album.

Jungle makes the kind of music that makes me want to clean my apartment, open every window in the house, and pretend I’m in a much cooler city than the one I’m currently in. I’ve loved both singles they’ve released so far, “Carry On” and “The Wave,” and if the rest of the album sounds anything like those songs, it’s going to dominate my August. Also, I always LOVE the dancing in the Jungle videos.

Also consuming these things:

I’m also hoping to spend time with Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead, Soft Spots by Leila Renee, and Desperate Bodies by Lydia Mathis. On the music side, I’m looking forward to Oh Yeah? by Steve Lacy, Beard by Syd, and Yearnalism by Baby Rose, and seeing what surprises me between now and September.

One thing I’ve noticed about the books and albums I’m choosing these days is that I’m less interested in stories about becoming and more interested in stories about what happens after. After the dream job. After the relationship. After the move. After the version of yourself you spent years trying to become.

Maybe that’s what this summer is about for me: not reinvention, but reflection.

I’d love to know what’s on your reading and listening list this summer. Hit reply or leave a comment and tell me what you’re most excited to spend time reading/listening to over the next few months.

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A little bit more for this week:

🎧 The New York Times Book Review podcast released its annual summer reading episode, and there were so many recommendations.

🎧 I loved last week’s episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast with Coleman Domingo. Truthfully, I would love to be Coleman’s niece or something.

🎧 Blxst’s new album Labor of Love came out on Friday, and I love it. As a California woman, whenever I listen to Blxst’s music, I immediately picture people dancing outside at a barbecue somewhere.

📺 Eve’s Tiny Desk came out this morning for Black Music Month and she was jamming + looked SOOO good.

📸 I was happy for the Knicks and their fans after they won their first NBA championship in 53 years. I’m especially excited to see the parade because I know New York is going to show out. ESPN’s social team also did a great job covering the win, so that’s what I’m ending with today.

That’s it for this week. I’ll catch you next week!

Hi friends,

On Sunday, I shared a conversation with author about her travel memoir Happy Iceland, releasing June 27th. We talked about her writing process, what inspired her trip to Iceland, what she learned about community and happiness, and the song she can’t stop listening to. What stayed with me afterward was her habit of noticing what she calls “simple delights” throughout her day.

What stayed with me was how simple and accessible the practice felt. I’ve dabbled in gratitude journaling over the years, but this felt slightly different. It wasn’t about documenting what I was thankful for; it was about paying attention. It asks you to be present enough to notice moments of joy, no matter how big or small they might be.

When I started thinking about the delights in my own life, they almost always centered on books or music. Sometimes it’s hearing the opening notes of a song I haven’t listened to in years. Sometimes it’s a sentence so good I stop reading and immediately reread it before writing it down in my journal, my Notes app, or the nearest notebook I can find. Sometimes I find myself so immersed in a story that an hour passes without me noticing. Other times, it’s dancing too hard in my living room after pressing shuffle on Spotify.

Lately I’ve been trying to pay closer attention to those moments. In the spirit of Anne Marie’s question, I put together a list of the book and music moments that have delighted me recently. I felt like this list could be excessive because, naturally, I tend to follow joy daily, so I stopped myself at under twenty things.

• The weather shifting just enough to let me read in my favorite location: in front of the window on my couch or on the floor.

• Running out of Spotify audiobook hours for the first time ever, after finally stopping waiting for perfect listening conditions.

• Finding 114 unread books on my bookshelf after reorganizing it for the first time in years. While excessive, I now have 114 new-to-me books I can read.

• Reading Good People by Patmeena Sabit and getting to talk about it with my friend for her podcast Bookwild.

• Falling deeper in love with Destin Conrad’s album wHIMSY!

• They All Fall in Love in the End by Halli Blessingame, a debut I didn’t want to put down.

• Watching the Earth, Wind & Fire documentary after reading Maurice White’s memoir. The memoir gave me the story, the documentary gave me the feeling. The story behind the song “Reason” surprised me.

• Revisiting this list of music focused books to read for Black Music Month (and this one as well).

• This passage from Kennedy Ryan’s new novel Score that I had to read twice:

  “Something we’re captive to, at the mercy of; our bodies so entangled it feels like our very souls are joined. The careful separations of commas and dashes and periods dissolve, and we are a run-on sentence. So caught up in right now untilwecannotdistinguishwhereoneendsandtheotherbegins.”

• Nick Young and Brandon Jennings dancing to Yung Miami’s “Spend Dat.” I really enjoy the joy people get from this song. Song of the summer contender for sure.

• Seeing Corinne Bailey Rae live last Tuesday performing songs from her debut album 20 years later. When I tell you my heart smiled, it would be an understatement. (I wrote about this album a few months ago, here)

What’s delighted you recently? Hit reply or leave a comment below. I’d love to know.

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A little bit more for this week

• If Sunday’s conversation is still with you: Anne Marie Wells’s debut travel memoir, Happy Iceland, is available for pre-order now and releases June 27th.

• The album that still holds up: Corinne Bailey Rae’s self-titled debut turns 20 this year and holds up completely.

• For when you want to go deeper on EWF: Maurice White’s memoir, My Life With Earth, Wind & Fire, is the context that makes everything else land differently.

• Finding happiness in simple moments: The full conversation with Anne Marie Wells is on the podcast now.

Those quiet moments and pockets of joy are exactly what author Anne Marie Wells set out to find when she boarded a plane to Iceland at 29, unemployed, and searching for something she couldn’t quite name yet. Instead of booking tours or following a guidebook, she walked up to a stranger in the airport and asked one simple question: what are your happiest memories here?

For five weeks she hitchhiked and backpacked across Iceland chasing the answers, from childhood sports fields and family farms to hidden waterfalls and the remote Highlands. Part adventure, part meditation on connection and joy, Happy Iceland, out June 27th from Star Belt Press, is a reminder that some of the best journeys begin when we slow down, actually listen, and find joy.

It took her ten years to write this book. And as she told me:

“You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t really skip over it and then suddenly be a good writer. You have to just learn all of it slowly as you learn it and then apply it to your writing.”

In this conversation we talked about:

• What happiness actually looks like when strangers describe it out loud

• Why asking what delighted you lands differently than keeping a gratitude journal

• Learning to write a book from scratch, with no formal training, over ten years

• The confidence it takes to travel solo and trust strangers with your story

• The one song she’s had on repeat for months

You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen/Watch Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

You can find Anne Marie on Instagram and order Happy Iceland now ahead of the June 27th release.

The question I asked Anne Marie at the end of our conversation was: what’s the one lesson about happiness from your trip that you’ve actually kept? Her answer was that happiness lives in other people, that connection is the through line no matter the setting. It’s not a new idea, but hearing it from someone who hitchhiked across Iceland asking strangers about joy for five weeks gives it a different kind of weight.

If this conversation sat with you, here are a few other things to explore:

If our conversation inspired you to read more, start with Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book about a woman who left without a plan and found something she wasn’t looking for.

Anne Marie quoted Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer in our conversation, the other side of the same journey: what happens when the search for meaning pulls you away from people instead of toward them.

Anne Marie has had RAYE’s “Suzanne” on repeat for months, and I had never heard the song before our conversation. Consider this your introduction.

The NYT interviewed Laurie Santos, the Yale professor behind the most popular college course ever taught on happiness, and separately published a piece on how to actually feel loved. Both are worth your time this week.

And if today’s conversation stayed with you, Anne Marie writes about the writing life, upcoming events, and submission tips over at her Substack.

Hi friends —

I must admit: I spent my writing time preoccupied with watching Jay Z’s performance at The Roots Picnic, and Your Friends and Neighbors on Apple TV and also making a summer playlist. I lost track of time, and feel comfort in knowing it happens to the best of us at times so this week I’m sha…

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Hi friends —

The holiday weekend was perfect. I spent the weekend napping, reading, and playing around with coffee since I got a new Nespresso machine. While quite an impulsive purchase, it was fun playing around with flavors to get the perfect cup.

On the reading front, I finally got to Kennedy Ryan's new novel, Score, and I loved it. It’s a second-chance romance between Verity Hill and Wright “Monk” Bellamy, two people who dated in college and never quite got over each other. More than a decade later, they’re commissioned to work together on a Harlem Renaissance biopic, the kind of project that could change everything for both of them. The question is whether they can put the past behind them for the sake of the film... and maybe for something more.

When I say I was kicking my feet and smiling while reading, that could be an understatement because I know I was doing the most. Kennedy has a way with words and crafts stories with complex themes woven within. Not only did I enjoy the characters and the story, but I also felt like I learned something about people and mental health.

Nonetheless, it was a great read, which made me think of a newsletter edition I wrote a few months ago about love deserving its soundtrack. In that piece, I wrote about the evolution of how Black people show up in romance novels, as well as the evolution of soul music, which was a beautiful element of Kennedy’s new book.

So instead of rewriting something with similar sentiments, I wanted to reshare that piece this week:

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In addition, here are a few things I thought were worth sharing this week:

🎧 Kennedy Ryan curated a playlist for Score, which you can find the songs here.

🔗 Also, if you have not, be sure to read her interview in The New York Times.

🔗 One of the people I miss the most, Barack Obama, on honoring the music that made us for Rolling Stone.

🎧 I have a literary crush on Jason Reynolds, so naturally I enjoyed his interview on Nina Westbrook’s Do Tell Relationship podcast.

🔗 I did both giggle and make a note at Bow Wow getting a Tiny Desk during Black Music Month.

🎧 If you haven’t yet, listen to my conversation with Carlie of She’s Becoming Bookish.

Also, I was on my friend ’s podcast discussing Patmeena Sabit’s debut novel, Good People. If you haven’t read the book, please do. In addition, please watch/listen to our conversation.

For this week’s newsletter, I have a fun interview with Carlie of one of my favorite YouTube channels, She’s Becoming Bookish.

Lately, I've been deep in my historical fiction era — and one of my friends suggested I check out Carlie's channel because she shares a lot of great historical fiction recommendations, along with so much more. I started watching her videos and immediately felt like I was hanging out with a friend. Carlie's personality comes through in every video, and her recommendations have already landed on my TBR list.

So naturally, I had to speak with Carlie for my newsletter.

In our conversation, we discussed a range of topics, including:

• How we each consume books and whether audiobooks really count — they do FYI

• What draws Carlie to historical fiction, especially stories centered on real women in history

• Her thoughts on ReShonda Tate’s novel, With Love from Harlem which I loved (watch my interview here)

• How she builds confidence on camera and why she made the pivot from TikTok to YouTube

• What books she’d hand to three different types of readers

• What music she thinks would actually make a great book

You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen/Watch Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Books mentioned in our conversation:

• With Love from Harlem by ReShonda Tate

• Queen of Sugar Hill by ReShonda Tate

• Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray

• Still Life by Sarah Winman

• Angels of the Resistance by Noelle Salazar

• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

• A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

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A little bit more for this week:

🔗 The Atlantic’s 2026 Summer Reading Guide - I have thoughts on this list, and my main thought is I’m not 100% sold on it but there are a few books I had on my TBR that are mentioned.

🔗 Giveon released his deluxe album for one of my favorite albums, Beloved, so I wrote about it and made a list of some books you should read in the same vein.

📚 Kennedy Ryan's Score: Her new book is out today and just ahead of the release, she announced a deal with Universal Studio Group to develop projects for Peacock, starting with Before I Let Go. I'm diving in this long weekend with my whole heart. Also, please just read the full interview — I loved the conversation.

📚 Famesick by Lena Dunham: I am currently reading Lena Dunham’s new memoir, and I must say I’m enjoying it. I’m reading it on my Kindle as well as listening to it, and I must say, one thing that I do enjoy is how open Lena is with what she shares. I think she’s always been very honest which people either love, or hate. Additionally, if you have not yet, I thought The New York Times Interview with Lena was good (also their UX has been so cool as of late).

🎧 Minnie Riperton’s Secret Symphony: is one of my favorite writers, and I loved reading this piece on Minnie Riperton’s background and her album Come to My Garden.

🎧 Patmeena Sabit on Politics and Prose Presents Podcast: I just finished reading Good People by Patmeena Sabit, and I must say, this is a book that will stick with me for a long time. I will more on that soon, but I thought this was a great conversation with her on the book, the setting and the story behind the book. Please if you have not, read this book.

That’s it for this week - I’ll catch you next week.

Happy Sunday.

Here I go again writing about Giveon and his album BELOVED, but on Friday, he released the second act of this album in the form of a deluxe with five new songs.

Typically, I’m slightly indifferent about deluxe albums unless they introduce another dimension to the original, and dare I say this one actually did.

The new tracks feat…

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This week’s newsletter is coming in on the mellow side, and honestly, mellow has been my mood as a whole lately. We celebrated my mom over the weekend, and somewhere in the middle of all of it I also deleted TikTok from my phone. As someone who works in social media and has genuinely found a healthy balance with it, I still somehow found myself deep in dash cam videos and body cam arrest footage at midnight. The tipping point was watching a woman get arrested at Ross because she wanted a discount. That was my cue to delete.

So this week, instead of a deep dive, I’m doing something I’ve been seeing all over and wanted to try for myself: last, current, and next for both reading and listening. Consider it a check-in. A look at what’s on the nightstand and in the headphones right now.

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THE BOOKS

Last: Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel

I have not stopped talking about this book since I finished it, and I’ll keep going. Enormous Wings follows Pepper Mills, a seventy-seven-year-old woman who, after a car accident, ends up living in a senior community where her ex-husband also happens to reside. She settles in, makes friends, falls for a new man, and then finds herself PREGNANT. Pepper lives in Austin, Texas, which adds a layer to the story that is very much of this moment, and Frankel doesn’t look away from it.

For me, what made this book work, is the quirkiness mixed with the weight of what was happening. It’s about female agency, about what happens when choices get made for you instead of by you, and about how love and friendship and family can still rearrange everything even late in the day.

Current: Good People by Patmeena Sabit

I’m about 40% in, and this book has not let me put it down. The story is told through interviews, assembling a portrait of the Sharaf family: wealthy, happy, a picture of immigrant success in an affluent Arlington, Virginia neighborhood. They arrived in this country with nothing and built what looks like everything. But something has happened to Zorah, the eldest daughter, the apple of her father’s eye, and the book asks you to sit with the question of what that something was.

I have a theory (I think I know what happened to Zorah, and it involves her father), but I’m not fully sure yet. What I love most is the structure: learning about this family through the eyes of neighbors, family friends, a department store owner. It’s intimate and unsettling in equal measure. I’ll report back when I finish.

I’m also doing a version of immersive reading with this one: listening to the audiobook and following along in print when I want to slow down. Highly recommend trying it if you haven’t. The audiobook has lots of different voices which as a somewhat green audiobook reader, I’m enjoying.

Next: Score by Kennedy Ryan

I must say, one of the books I’ve been most anxiously waiting for is Score by Kennedy Ryan. After completely falling in love with her writing through the Skyland series, I knew I needed more. This one is a second-chance romance, and if Ryan’s past work is any indication, I’m expecting all the tension, chemistry, and emotional dialogues — plus a fine man with a deep voice (which is exactly how I imagined Maverick and Judah in my head).

The book follows Verity and Monk, former college lovers whose breakup clearly left a lasting mark on both of them. More than a decade later, they’re reunited while working on a Harlem Renaissance biopic. She’s writing the script, and he’s creating the score. It’s very much about the aftermath of first love, old wounds, unresolved chemistry, and whether two people can really move past what happened between them.

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THE MUSIC

Last: Spring Playlist

Lately, I’ve been listening to a little bit of everything through my Spring playlist. It’s become a home for all the music I’ve been enjoying recently, from Little Brother and Durand Bernarr to Hayley Williams, Kehlani, and Larry June. It’s a solid mix, though I’ve admittedly put some of it on pause because of my current listens, which I’ll get into below.

Current: Mack Keane — Wide Eyed

I’m not sure how long I had been waiting for this album, but it was definitely a long time, and thankfully, it lives up to the anticipation. Wide Eyed is groovy from the very beginning, starting with the intro track, which immediately settles you into the album’s warm, late-night atmosphere. It’s not exactly a breakup album. It feels more like an album about living in the aftermath of your own bad decisions and figuring out what to do with them. There’s a level of self-awareness running through the project that keeps it grounded, while the production stays smooth and textured without ever feeling empty. It’s the kind of album that reveals something new with every listen.

Also in heavy rotation since Friday: Dedicated to Cadalee Biarritz (Deluxe) by Big K.R.I.T and CEREMONIAL by Black Milk.

Next: Giveon — Beloved Act II

If you’ve been here a while, you know how I feel about Beloved. It was my most played album last year. Giveon was my most played artist. Three songs from that album were in my top five of the year. So when I say I’m ready for Act II, I mean I’ve been ready.

Out Friday, the deluxe edition adds five new songs featuring Leon Thomas, Kehlani, Sasha Keable, and Teddy Swims, a lineup that should not work as well as I suspect it will. Giveon’s already previewed “JEZEBEL” and it is funky. It’s giving playa from the Himalayas, and he has on a mink. I don’t know why that’s exactly what I thought, but it is, and I stand by it.

A little bit more for this week:

• So far, as of one day, I think Pop Culture Jeopardy is already better on Netflix.

• If you missed last week’s newsletter, I had a great conversation with author Imani Thompson, who just released her debut novel Honey. You can read the conversation here.

• I also had a fun interview with author Randee Dawn about her new book, We Interrupt this Program, which you can listen to here.

Let know what’s currently on your last/current/next list!

Hi friends,

Before we get into today’s newsletter, I wanted to say Happy Mother’s Day to every mom, bonus mom, grandmother, godmother, aunt, and mother figure — every person who helped make up someone’s village.

As an only child, I grew up surrounded by women who poured into me constantly. My mom, my grandmother, my aunts, my older cousins — so much of wh…

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Purchase Honey by Imani Thompson

Hi friends —

At the beginning of every year, I make a list of the upcoming books I’m most excited to read. This year, near the top of that list was Honey, the debut novel from London-based author, Imani Thompson.

I’ll be honest. Initially I was drawn to the cover first. It featured a Black arm drenched in honey, which immediately made me think of Beyoncé’s “PURE/HONEY.” But then when I moved past the cover, the description of the book drew me in:

When I finally got the chance to read the book, OUT TODAY, I found myself laughing and cringing in equal measure, pulled in by a voice that felt sharp, unsettling, and unexpectedly funny. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I finished, which is why I am so excited that I got to speak with Imani about the book.

From our conversation, I learned that Imani knew she wanted to be a writer by age eight. She started university studying English literature, but four weeks into medieval literature, she switched to sociology because the syllabus wasn’t going to answer her questions. In her final year, over coffee with her mom, the idea for Honey came into focus: race theory, gender-based violence, and what it means to be a woman of color, all wrapped in genre. A female serial killer hunting bad men. The theory could live inside the story. The ideas could travel further if the book were also engaging.

So I’m excited to share my conversation with Imani where we talk about the book and everything behind it. In this conversation, we talk about a lot including:

• Writing as both intention and instinct

• What it means to create a character you shouldn’t like, but do

• The difference between rage and desire

• How music shapes the rhythm of a novel

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What I loved about reading Honey is how often it makes you think. Even as Yrsa makes certain choices, I found myself thinking about them over in real time. And the humor is real. There’s a moment where she’s in the garden thinking about flowers and says something like, “If I’d started collecting flowers instead of killing people.” That was so funny to me, and there are little things like that throughout.

I’m pleased you found it funny. I don’t look at reviews, but I’ve seen where people say, “this is supposed to be funny, but where’s the humor?” which I think speaks to how subjective humor is. But I wanted to make it funny because when you’re dealing with these themes and these topics, people’s defenses naturally go up. So it’s a way of relaxing the reader. And what I love about the humor is that the reader becomes complicit in the story. If you’re laughing along with her and then she does something terrible, you’ve already been laughing along with her. I wanted to play with the reader in that way. And I wanted her to be a lovable psychopath. That was important to me. I needed us to like her.

I did like her. And going into her background a little, she was studying Afropessimism in school. I had never heard the term before, but I recognized the framework. Given that it was part of her storyline, it seemed like she used it to justify her actions. For you, how important was it to educate readers on that theory and then use it as her framework for navigating everything?

It’s really interesting. My initial way of her killing people was that I wanted to switch the lens on violence, turn the gaze on its head. So I had her killing men in ways that women are often killed. It’s why she kills an ex-boyfriend of hers. It’s why she stages herself as an escort and kills someone in that way. It’s why you have this incel, manosphere-type character as well.

When I wrote the first draft, I didn’t know what she was studying for her PhD. My mum suggested I look into Afropessimism1, and when I did, I thought, this is perfect for the book. It came in at a later draft as this theoretical undercurrent, because while you think she’s killing people because of racial justice or feminist justice, it’s not actually what drives her. She is somewhat vengeful, but really, it’s about her power addiction.

That’s how I wrote her, as an addict. She binges on sugar, experiments with sex early in her life, looking for something that will satisfy her, and it doesn’t. It’s only when she kills that she’s like, yeah, that’s it. She gives herself this justification, but it’s not actually what’s driving her.

That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but the way Yrsa approaches desire from such a young age and reaches for people outside of her age group, it tracks with everything you just described about her as an addict.

Yeah, and I find it interesting how the book is being spoken about. Questions I’m getting asked around female rage. I totally understand why you’d read it that way, and it’s kind of how I initially pitched it myself. But it’s really not about rage, because she’s really not angry. What I find so fascinating about her is that she goes beyond that. She understands her societal constraints. She understands why she should be angry. She does sociology. But she pushes beyond all of that because she’s just doing it for her own desire. That’s the real reason she acts. And it was quite cathartic to write. Not so much the violence, but a woman who just does exactly what she wants.

Right, and I think what makes that so clear is the contrast with her friendships. She’s not someone who’s at war with everyone around her. She didn’t really read as rageful to me.

Yeah, she definitely isn’t filled with rage. There are things that annoy her, of course, but she’s also on that psychopathic scale, so she just doesn’t interact with the world or her emotions the way most people do. She’s different.

This is your debut novel, but you’ve also written short stories. How was the process of writing a full-length book different? And how did your experience as a bookseller help shape the full-length book?

I was always very focused on the novel form. Even as a kid, I wanted to write novels. I actually find short stories more daunting. The shorter something is, the more on point it has to be. With a novel, there’s more room for error.

For me, writing is a kind of spiritual thing. When I start a novel, I have to get myself out of the way and tap into this voice or this atmosphere. The biggest thing I follow is rhythm. Yrsa’s voice came to me very immediately, and I followed that rhythm all the way through. I think Mark Twain says he creates a character, then steps back and sees what they do. I relate to that.

Honey was different from what I normally write because of the amount of plotting involved. She’s killing people, so you have to work out how she gets from A to B and how she gets away with it. That was a fun challenge, because I’m not naturally a plotter. My process was also shaped by the fact that I was writing while working full-time, finding time after work in small pockets. Then I was fired, which was actually very helpful. I planned a beautiful routine. I would wake up, do morning pages, and write five hundred words. I did not do this. I procrastinated all day, and then at 10 p.m. thought, “I should write something.” That is still my process.

And what did working in a bookstore teach you?

I was doing my editing while working there. It helped me understand the industry, how big and commercial it is, how many books are being published, and how small a drop you are in that ocean. Seeing how marketing budgets correlate with book sales was a very practical education. But what stayed with me was how many people came in wanting to talk about what they were reading, wanting recommendations, genuinely loving books. That was heartening. There is this idea that everyone just buys online and no one goes to bookstores anymore, but people do. And they are having those conversations.

I kept seeing Honey on people’s most-anticipated lists for 2026. How has it been watching that build, especially with the auctions?

It was shocking. That two-week period when the book sold was one of the most surreal of my life. I had prepared myself for not getting an agent or being published for a long time. I know how difficult it is. So when two auctions happened, I thought, “What is going on?”

Now it is less than a month until the book comes out, and I feel like I am riding waves of excitement and anxiety. It is strange when there is a long buildup, but you do not know how people will respond. There can be industry buzz, but until it is in readers’ hands, you do not know. So I try to stay present and not get too far ahead of myself. Otherwise, I think you would go a bit mad.

When you look at the cover alongside the book, I feel like it actually helps tell the story. What was the process of selecting it?

Thankfully, I really like both the US and the UK covers, because I was very stressed about it. I’m an aesthetically driven person, and I thought, if I don’t like my cover, what am I going to do? They sent me the US cover quite a few weeks before the UK one. I thought it was really strong. I liked that it had a kind of 70s vibe. My only note was whether the colors captured the novel’s lighter side, but I trusted the designers completely. What’s been fascinating is seeing the translation covers and how different markets interpret the book visually. When I show the US and UK covers to Brits and Americans, Americans always prefer the American one, which tells you the designers knew what they were doing.

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Because so much of what I write about is the intersection of books and music, I noticed the Cleo Sol mention and the Destiny’s Child moment. Was there music you were listening to while you were writing?

Yes. I actually have a playlist I made while writing that I can send you. I do this for every book. Both my novels have completely different playlists, and I listen while I work.

Music is essential to how I write, because my writing is so rooted in rhythm. Music is the closest thing to the texture I’m trying to create in a scene or across the novel as a whole. If I’m stuck, I’ll put music on loud and dance around my house, and then come back to the page. It helps me get out of my own head and hear what the story wants.

If you had to name one song or album as the core sound of Honey, what would it be?

There’s a song I heard recently where I thought, “This is the most Yrsa song I’ve ever heard, but I can’t put it on the playlist because it’s too explicit.” It’s by a musician called Imani Coppola, who I’m named after. I feel like that song is very Yrsa-coded, but I won’t be promoting it anywhere.

From the actual playlist, I listened to a lot of Nina Simone. And the Billie Holiday album Trav’Lin’ Light, that’s mentioned in the book. Those tapped into the maternal line and the novel’s spiritual core. And then Beyoncé’s “Pure Honey” was a significant one.

There’s also an artist I discovered recently, Kirby, and she has a song called “Reparations,” where I thought, yes, that’s exactly what Yrsa is doing. During our title conversations, I even floated “Reparations” as a possible title, jokingly. They were not going with that.

I read that you were moodboarding with Danielle McKinney’s work. I could absolutely see parts of the book in her paintings.

Yes. And now I’m thinking if I mention Danielle McKinney enough, maybe one day she’ll paint something for me. Her work is so beautiful. I watch a novel like a movie in my head as I write, so visual cues are really helpful. I use Pinterest a lot for moodboarding. With the book I’m writing now, I sometimes go back to those boards and get direct ideas for scenes. I also try to go to exhibitions, watch films, and constantly feed the imagination.

You describe your writing process as spiritual. How much does that shape how you work?

It’s hard to articulate, because it’s not spirituality in a traditional sense. The concept for Honey was strategic. I thought about how to write something that could get published. But once I had that, I had to get out of my own way.

It feels like a spiritual practice because I’m tapping into something I can’t fully explain. I have to listen. That’s why I rely on music, why I move around, why I try to get out of my own head. I’m trying to hear what the story needs.

And I think if it comes to you that way, it’s easier to sustain than trying to force it.

Yes. But I also believe deeply in craft. You have to read. You have to study. You have to understand how books work. When that discipline meets the more intuitive side, that’s when something really strong can happen.

Can you tell us anything about the second book?

It’s quite different. There’s less dialogue and more focus on prose, and it’s written in first person, which has been really enjoyable. In some ways, I feel more comfortable with it because there’s less plotting. But I always want to push myself and try something new with form. What’s strange is that I’ve already written another book, but it might be years before anyone reads it. In a world that moves so quickly, publishing is still very slow.

Purchase Honey by Imani Thompson

1. Album as a Book: ‘Superbloom’ by Jessie Ware

2. Leonor Mamanna on Consistency, Reading & Curating

3. on the jungle floor and the phases of love

Hi friends —

I started writing this week’s newsletter while sitting in the braid shop for eight hours on Saturday. I’d like to believe that had more to do with the complexity of my style than the size of my head. It turned out to be a good place to read: I finished Start With Yourself, made good progress on Enormous Wings, and started A Harlem Wedding. It was also a good place to sit with my thoughts.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation about taste and preferences when it comes to books and music. I’ve always believed you can tell a lot about a person by what they return to: the books they reread, the albums they can recite, and the memories they bring up unprompted. Taste is never just taste. It’s biographical.

So today, I’m sharing five books and five albums that don’t just entertain me. They explain me. And as an indecisive Libra, narrowing this down was a challenge — almost as hard as the desert island book list I once asked to make.

Five books and what they say about me

I’m Down by Mishna Wolff
If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, you’ve probably seen me mention this book tons of times. It’s my favorite book. It’s a memoir about a girl trying to fit in, trying to belong, and trying to be seen in a world where she sticks out like a sore thumb, and she learns to find humor in that. Every time I reread it, I find something new to hold onto. Some books you meet once. This one has met me at many points in my life and speaks to the gap between who you are and who the world thinks you should be.

Jazz by Toni Morrison
My first Toni Morrison book, stolen from my stepmom’s bookshelf because I wanted to read an adult book. The way she puts words together mesmerized me. The subject matter was something I had never lived through, but I felt I understood it instinctively. That was when I learned stories don’t need to be your lived experiences to stick with you. This book made me feel like I could read other people’s truths and secrets as if they were my own.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Not to be hella dramatic, but this book kind of changed my trajectory. I read it in college and wrote a review about it for my journalism class. Professor Wallace, my favorite professor ever, read it and told me to pitch it to my school newspaper, The Pioneer, and it got published. At the time, I was a conflicted broadcast major: I enjoyed talking but hated having to redo segments because of my facial expressions (still tracks), so this book and that encouragement gave me the confidence to focus on print journalism instead. If I had to sum it up, again in dramatic terms, this book helped me find my confidence. Not to mention, the story stirred up so many emotions.

The Color of Water by James McBride
This is my second-favorite book of all time. I had to read it for class, but I kept highlighting passages and copying lines into my journal. This is the book that made me a James McBride fan. With this book, I loved how he wrote about his family with tenderness, specificity, humor, and grace. He understands that the smallest details are often where love lives. Every time I return to it, I’m reminded that great writing is not just about what happened, but how closely you paid attention.

Love by the Book by Jessica George
This is a newbie book. It came out last month, and I loved it so much. What I loved about this book is how honest it felt about the kinds of relationships adulthood asks us to maintain. Friendships. Love lives. Careers. Responsibilities. The people we show up for, and the people and things we unintentionally neglect. This book made me think about how I move through my own friendships and the ways I want to be better in them. To me, this book shows me constantly learning how to show up for the people I love, and I loved Remy and Simone’s friendship.

Five albums and what they say about who I am

Christina Aguilera’s self-titled debut
This album made me a digital creator. Before Tumblr, Myspace, and Blackplanet, where you could show off your coding skills, there was Geocities, and a girl with braces, a press and curl, and glasses who had a love for Christina Aguilera. My best friend and I created a fan site for Christina, xtinaland.geocities.com, devoted to her, complete with a scrolling marquee of lyrics and nicknames. Long before “content creation” was a career path, I was already making things because I loved something. This album still hits, though I must say. Let this be your push to listen to “Love for All Seasons,” “Somebody’s Somebody,” and “When You Put Your Hands on Me” on a loop.

Secrets by Toni Braxton
This is one of the first albums I remember knowing every word to. I even got in trouble for knowing every word to it, which somehow told me she was talking about a lot. Toni Braxton was, and still is, one of my favorite singers ever, and growing up, she was everything to me. This album raised me before I understood what it was teaching. I revisit this album when I’m in a mood — any kind of mood: obnoxious and wanting to sing loud in the car with my windows down, domestic and want to clean up my house, annoyed and wondering “Why Should I Care.” Truthfully, an iconic album.

Share My World by Mary J. Blige
This is one of the albums I was raised on. It was one of my mom’s favorites, and she would play it ALL the time: while cleaning, and even now, as I type the title, I can hear the title track in my head. Some albums stop being music and become part of your story, and this is that album for me. This one became home. I think with relationships and life, my mom felt the lyrics a lot as I was growing up, and it wasn’t until I was older that I really understood the lyrics of the songs I knew all the words to.

The Listening by Little Brother
To know me is to know I love Little Brother. I’m not sure why I keep using that as a phrase, but let’s roll with it. This album is my comfort album for sure. It’s an album I can play from start to finish without a single skip. If I need to feel lighter, steadier, happier, this is where I go. I think there’s something powerful about knowing exactly what restores you, and what album can change the path of your day. This album also features one of my favorite runs of sequencing, starting with “Speed” and continuing through “The Way You Do It.” Those 8 songs are all back-to-back, so I’m just reiterating that point in hopes you’ll listen if you haven’t.

Heard It In a Past Life by Maggie Rogers
Some albums belong to a season. This one belongs to my life. I listen to some part of this album every single day — on walks, while working, in the car, at the coffee shop, through moods I can name and the ones I can’t. It meets me wherever I am and somehow always leaves me steadier than it found me. For me, this album feels like learning to trust the season that I am in.

Looking at both my book and music lists, I don’t just see favorites. I see breadcrumbs into who raised me, what moved me, what gave me language, what gave me perspective, and what steadies me now.

Maybe that’s all taste really is: a record of the things that helped make us, and the things still shaping who we’re becoming.

⚡ I’m curious: what books or albums do you keep returning to, and what do they say about you?

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A little bit more for this week:

🔗 wrote a GREAT piece on Beyonce’s Lemonade which just celebrated its ten-year anniversary. Reading it reminded me that I need to spend more time consuming the album and visuals.

🔗 I sent this to all the Sade fans in my life. As always writes such a great edition and this one is on Sade who is one of the newest inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

📚 I finished Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel on Sunday and thought it was quirky and fun, with a deeper storyline than it first lets on. I wrote about it on my Storygraph and Goodreads and believe it would be a good book for a book club discussion.

📚 If you’re curious what books should be on your radar next month, made a pretty good list, which you can read here.

🎧 I have not stopped listening to Kehlani’s new self-titled album.

🎧 Last week I went down a full Disclosure rabbit hole after Spotify shuffled to “Omen” featuring Sam Smith. From there I went to “Holding On” featuring Gregory Porter, then “Voices” featuring Sasha Keable, which is how I first discovered her. That led me to “Giving It All” by Bondax, one of my favorite songs of 2013—which somehow introduced me to Disclosure in the first place. Full circle. Play any of those songs if you need an afternoon dopamine hit. | They are all on my SPRING playlist as well.

⚡ With the lists up top, as mentioned, it was a little hard for me to just one album or one book, but I have written about a few of the other albums that have shaped me recently, so sharing those as well:

That’s it for this week - I’ll catch you next week.

Hi friends,

​As I mentioned in last Tuesday’s newsletter, I wanted to spend time with Jessie Ware’s new album, Superbloom, which was released April 17th.

​To know me is to know I love Jessie Ware.

​I’ve been a fan since Devotion in 2012. And what has kept me as a fan throughout the years is her constant evolution. Her sound changes with each era, but intimacy, relationships, and her vocals remain central. Superbloom continues this tradition, and it might be her most complete statement yet.

In the press release for the album, Jessie said she wanted to move past the escapism of What’s Your Pleasure? and explore real relationships—the love she has and the fear of losing it. This album does just that. It closes a trilogy beginning with What’s Your Pleasure? and That! Feels Good! Those records were about discovering pleasure; this one is about integration, trading fantasy for presence, and embodying desire, love, and motherhood together without contradiction.

Listening to this album, I couldn't stop thinking about it as a story. So I opened it like a book and here’s what I found.

If this album were a novel…

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For this week’s newsletter, I am excited to share an interview with Leonor Mamanna, who writes one of my favorite newsletters, Leave It to Leonor.

I have been reading Leonor’s newsletter for a long time, almost 200+ editions, I think. For me, this tells me two things: first, wow, time flies when you’re reading well, and second, Leonor has the consistency I aspire to.

Leonor started her newsletter in August 2016, ten years ago this year, and what began as a place to share what she was reading, watching, and loving has grown into one of the most reliably good things in my inbox week after week. By day, Leonor works as a visuals director and has been the person behind the Instagram account for the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

Leonor has been reading all her life—devouring Babysitters Club, borrowing books from her aunt, and even reading VC Andrews at a young age. The House on Mango Street was the first book that truly reflected her and her family, shaping her reading journey.

We bonded over our love of Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang. In our conversation, we covered a range of topics, including:

• How did Leave It to Leonor evolve from a simple link roundup into the essay-and-recommendations format it is today?

• The way her day job as a visuals director shapes how she curates and what she looks for when she’s putting the newsletter together

• Our years of being chronically online: Livejournal, Myspace, Geocities

• Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, her dream guest list, and why Tracee Ellis Ross needs to be on it immediately

• Reading three books at a time without losing the thread, and her two current recommendations: The Safekeep (go in blind) and The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy.

• The A Little Life Instagram, Book Face Fridays, and what eleven years of watching people rediscover a book looks like up close

Below you will find a few links to things mentioned in our conversation. You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen to Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Subscribe it to Leave it to Leonor

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

• To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

• Less by Andrew Sean Greer

• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

• Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

Good Hang episodes we referenced:

• Dakota Johnson

• Regina Hall

• Gwyneth Paltrow

• Viola Davis

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A little bit more for this week:

🎵 Jessie Ware released her sixth album, Superbloom, on Friday, and I love it. To know me is to know that Jessie is my girl, and one of the things I appreciate most about her music is how she constantly evolves her sound. I’ll be writing more about this album for my Sunday newsletter, but please listen to it.

🔗 Imperfect Women is keeping me on my toes and here is an interview with the cast. If you’re watching it, let’s discuss, please.

🔗 My gal wrote a great piece about why the Dallas Wings were right to shutdown the questions around Azzi Fudd’s relationship with Paige Bueckers.

🔗 If you have seen The Drama and/or having followed the career of Zendaya, I thought this was an interesting perspective from Doreen St. Felix for The New Yorker.

📺 Enjoyed watching this conversation with Jill Scott and Tyler the Creator so much.

📺 As someone on social media, and someone who works in social media, I really enjoyed KevOnStage’s interview on Cam Newton’s podcast. Cam asked good questions which… also has me flabbergasted.

📺 I know that Emma Grede has ruffled some feathers on her press tour for her new book, Start With Yourself, about WFH and motherhood, but I must admit I have been enjoying it. Here are a few of her tour stops that I enjoyed: Joe Budden podcast, She’s So Lucky Podcast, Baby it’s Keke Palmer Podcast and Monica Lewinsky’s podcast.

Well that’s it for this week. I’ll catch you on Sunday!

• Interview with Jordan Hernandez of

• Q1 in Books, Music and Everything Else

• Continued listens and reads inspired by FX’s Love Story

Hi friends —

Happy Tuesday. Over the weekend, I was writing about one of my favorite albums of all time celebrating it’s 20th year anniversary, and also, started writing about Brandy’s memoir, Phases, and Jessica George’s new book, Love by The Book, so instead of writing three separate newsletters, I put them all in one place with a few other things I’m recommending this week so let’s jump into it.

Anniversary: Van Hunt’s On The Jungle Floor

Earlier this month, one of my favorite albums of all time, Van Hunt’s On the Jungle Floor, celebrated its 20th anniversary.

The album came out during my senior year, and I remember my stepmom taking my friend and me to Virgin Records in Union Square in San Francisco just so I could get it. I then made her play the album all the way back to Foster City. By the time we hit the bridge, I had already established that I loved this album — that for me, it would be an instant classic, in my heart.

That's the beauty of this record. It's the opposite of a slow burn — so I guess a fast burn? From the first few songs, you could tell that something different was happening here. It's a funky album with a beautiful blend of rock and soul, and the writing, the singing, the instrumentation — all of it. One of the saddest things about it, to me, is that not as many people know it as should. When I say I played the hell out of this album, that would be an understatement. It was the backdrop to so many of my favorite memories, including one in particular: driving my Ford Escort Sports Coupe up Webster trying to get to the Fillmore, not understanding the light-braking-on-hills thing, and watching my car start rolling backwards. Van Hunt was playing. I survived.

The songs I revisit often are: “If I Take You Home” “Hot Stage Lights”“Being a Girl” “Suspicion (She Knows Me Too Well)” “Character” “The Thrill of This Love” and “The Night is Young.” I could describe each of these songs to you, but what I really want you to understand is that, this album is full of songs that give you something new every single time. Van Hunt writes songs and relationships the way authors do, with interiority and contradiction without judgement.

Twenty years later, I still have the same reaction to these songs that I did when I was a teenager, and I think that’s beautiful.

Also, if you want to be entertained: I interviewed him in college for my blog, and you can tell from literally the very first second how excited I was to be talking to him.

Listen to interview here

Book: Brandy’s memoir Phases

I had been excited to read Brandy’s memoir since last year, when I first heard it was coming out. To know me is to know I love Brandy. She has been one of my favorite singers since childhood, and as a fan I was confident the book was going to be good — and truthfully, it delivered.

Read more

As a reader, I have always thought about the reading community and how I show up in it. With so many readers having book clubs and a new wave of silent book clubs popping up around the country, it’s clear that I’m not alone in that thinking. People are looking for both connection and community around reading, both digitally and in-person, and Jordan Hernandez, founder of Completely Booked, has made it her mission to build exactly that.

​Jordan started the community in February 2020, before the pandemic stopped the world, and what began as a platform to share what she was reading has grown into a virtual book club, in-person book swaps, author conversations, a thriving digital community on both Instagram and TikTok, and a Substack where she writes with the kind of specificity and honesty that both invites you in, and also makes you save a few notes and reads for later.

​I have been following Jordan’s content for a while, and was excited to chat with her about the importance of reading diverse books, the community she’s cultivating on social media, and even some of the parallels between reading and her passion for running. In our conversation, we discussed many things including:

• Her origin story as a reader and how magazines changed everything

• The responsibility and joy of curating books for a community

• What it actually means to read diversely and why it matters right now

• How she thinks about building community across different platforms

• What makes a great audiobook and her immersive reading method

• The parallels between marathon training and being an avid reader

You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen to Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Connect with Jordan:
⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠TikTok⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠

Completely Booked newsletters mentioned:

• 11 Novels Coming by Black Women in 2026

• From Bad Bunny to Boricua Books: 10 Puerto Rican Authors You Should Be Reading Now

• 5 Audiobooks That Made Me Fall Even Deeper in Love With Reading

Books mentioned during our conversation:

• If I Ruled the World by Amy DuBois Barnett

• The Slightest Green by Sahar Mustafah

• What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez

• Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

• The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Motley

• The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

• Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi

• Kin by Tayari Jones

• I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For by Bsrat Mezghebe

• Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

• The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery by Clarence A. Haynes

• Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

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A little bit more for this week:

🔗 Angel Reese was traded to the Atlanta Dream, and I’m pretty excited about it personally. I think she will do great on that team and I’m excited to see her play with Howard and Gray.

🔗 Also in WNBA news, I am counting down the days to the draft next week and am hosting a baby dinner party: wings and salad are currently on the menu.

📚 American Fantasy by Emma Straub is out today and it was a fun read. I finished it last week and will say that while the topic was kind of random, boy-bands on a cruise ship, it was a fun and light read. If you read it, please let me know your thoughts.

📚Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke comes out today as well, and I can’t wait to read this book. From all the reviews I have listened to or read about this book so far, it seems like it will be such a good book. Here’s an interview with the author, and a short description of the book:

Well this is all for this week, I’ll catch you next week. In the meantime, here is my new playlist: Spotify | Apple Music

Hi friends,

It’s hard to believe Q1 is already over. So much has happened these past few months, so let’s dive in.

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It’s my dad’s birthday today, and it’s kind of tripping me out.

Watching your parents age is beautiful, and also a reminder that you, too, are getting older. It’s interesting seeing the roles shift: the parent coming to you with new discoveries, curious about your interests and opinions on things. I can’t necessarily pinpoint the shift, but i…

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Hi friends,

That might be my longest subject line in a while, but I’m pretty excited to write this one because I’m watching episode seven of the show as I write.

This episode follows John and Carolyn’s wedding and the paparazzi are doing the absolute most. Seeing how difficult the adjustment was for Carolyn was sad to watch, which might explain why my mi…

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I have been talking about With Love from Harlem by ReShonda Tate to anyone who would listen. I even wrote about the book here.

ReShonda is the author of 54 books – yes, 54 books – and With Love from Harlem is her latest released on January 27th. It’s a historical novel about Hazel Scott, one of the most brilliant and groundbreaking entertainers of the 20th century, and her deeply complicated marriage to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Set against the backdrop of 1940s and 50s Harlem, it’s a story about fame, love, ambition, and sacrifice. And at its heart, it asks what it truly costs to be a trailblazer when the world is applauding your talent but still trying to control your voice.

While reading, I took so many notes, and what I did not fully expect was how Hazel’s story would stay with me after reading.

Hazel was the first Black person to host a national television show. She was commanding $100,000 a year at a time when most Black women couldn’t walk through the front door of the venues she was selling out. And yet her legacy was largely erased — a casualty of the Red Scare and the particular way history treats Black women who refuse to be quiet. ReShonda wrote her back in, and I’m so grateful she did.

I got a chance to speak with ReShonda about the book and in our conversation, she talks about how she lays the foundation for her historical fiction with facts and fills in the private spaces with imagination, what drew her to Hazel Scott, the beautiful and complicated sisterhood between Hazel and Billie Holiday, and what she believes Hazel would say to artists navigating this current moment.

As always, you can watch the interview here on Substack or here via YouTube. You can also listen to the interview using the links below.

Listen/Watch on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

On finding creativity over time to write 54 books:

It includes my teen books. I used to write for teenagers, so that counts toward the total. But honestly, I just have an active imagination and I get inspiration from everywhere. I’ll be sitting in Starbucks working and someone walks in for their morning coffee with no idea they just became the inspiration for a character in my next novel.

On writing historical fiction:

I lay the foundation with facts. That’s what historical fiction is for me. I use real events as anchors while imagining the private conversations that happened behind closed doors. The fiction comes in filling in the blanks, but the majority of the story is grounded in what actually happened.

A quick synopsis of With Love from Harlem:

It’s a historical novel about Hazel Scott, one of the most brilliant and groundbreaking entertainers of the 20th century, and her high-profile, deeply complicated relationship with Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. He was known as the King of Harlem. The book is set against the backdrop of 1940s and 50s Harlem and explores what happens when two ambitious, larger-than-life Black icons collide at the height of their power. Hazel was a musical prodigy, a glamorous star, and a political force who refused to perform for segregated audiences.

At its heart, the story is about fame, love, ambition, and sacrifice. It asks what it costs to be a trailblazer when the world is applauding your talent but still trying to control your voice.

On what drew her to write about Hazel Scott after writing about Hattie McDaniel:

Hattie tried to change the world through endurance, through getting along. Hazel was the complete opposite. She wanted to change the world through defiance. She felt the world wasn’t adapting to what was right, and she wasn’t going to wait for it. I loved that contrast because there’s room in this world for both types of people.

The importance of Hazel Scott’s legacy:

She should be a household name, and the fact that she isn’t tells you everything about how history treats Black women. She was one of the most gifted musicians of her generation. She was the first Black person to host a national television show. She was commanding stages, reshaping classical music, starring in films, and earning $100,000 a year at a time when most Black women couldn’t walk through the front door of the venues she was selling out. And then her legacy was largely erased, a casualty of the Red Scare, of being labeled a communist for speaking up. I wanted to write her back into history.

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The Outro:

A few other things worth sharing this week:

📖 Reading Four new books dropped today worth your attention: Black. Single. Mother. by Jamilah Lemieux, Westward Women by Alice Martin, and Judy Blume: A Life by Mark Oppenheimer. I already finished the Blume biography and while I thought it was a good read, it didn’t capture me in the way I thought it would. It felt almost like an extended interview or something to me — can’t quite put my finger on the disconnect. If you read it, I’d be curious to know your thoughts.

🎵 Listening I started with Yebba’s new album Jean and while I enjoy Yebba, this album didn’t move me the way I hoped. The vibe isn’t the vibe I’m in right now. This might be her Man in the Woods moment for me, but I’ll spin the block on this later. What actually did grab me this week was Kokoroko’s new EP From Metropolis Studios, which includes three songs, including “Idea 5,” which has been a favorite since Tuff Times Never Last.

🔗 Clicking

• School is in Session — My conversation with ReShonda has Harlem on my mind, and if you know me, you know I don’t need much of a reason. Last summer I put together a whole curriculum around it. This is that.

• New Music Drops: March 6 — It was a big Friday. If you’re trying to figure out where to start did the work so you don’t have to.

That’s it for this week — I’ll catch you next week.