For the smart and free thinking, Black Market Reads podcast launches Season 4

MINNEAPOLIS - Oct. 10, 2018 - PRLog -- The Givens Foundation for African American Literature celebrates the start of a fourth season of podcasting with media partner iDream.tv and welcomes back host Lissa Jones for a 3^rd season of insightful interviews with African American authors. The first episode of Season 4 of Black Market Reads, features an interview with poet Patricia Smith. Smith's 2017 poetry collection, Incendiary Art, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In this behind-the-scenes interview, during her visit to the University of Minnesota, Smith talks about her influences, the power of words, and the fire that runs beneath them.

Additional authors scheduled for Season 4 include DeRay McKesson, author of On the Other Side of Freedom, Julian Randall, author of Refuse, and Danez Smith, author of Don't Call Us Dead.

"Building on a rich tradition of African American storytelling, Black Market Reads takes me deeper in the books I'm reading, and listeners get to hear directly from the inquisitive, emotional, intellectual, spiritual experiences of Black people, who take pen to paper to help affirm us, to challenge us, to examine us, to amplify us, and to help us work out, this life we live, in black. Can you dig it"? – Lissa Jones, host

A new feature of the podcast series is an expanded website, BlackMarketReads.com (http://www.BlackMarketReads.com), where listeners and lovers of literature can "go deeper" with links and videos to learn more about the authors, see them in performance, and get a taste of what inspires them.

Black Market Reads, and Lissa Jones, will be engaging with book lovers at Rain Taxi's Twin Cities Book Festival on October 13, 2018 at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds where a number of authors featured on the podcast will be signing books and visitors will have an opportunity to engage with authors in person.

Where can listeners find Black Market Reads?

Listeners can subscribe to Black Market Reads on Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, and many other common podcast platforms, or stream episodes through the new BlackMarketReads.com (http://www.BlackMarketReads.com) website or on Libsyn (http://givensbmr.libsyn.com/),

Archival episodes of Black Market Reads are still available and feature conversations with writers as diverse as Justice Alan Page, screenwriter Michael Starrbury, flash-fiction writer Desiree Cooper, magical realist A. Raphael Johnson, as well as Roxane Gay, Mat Johnson, Sonya Renee Taylor, Duchess Harris, Mary Moore Easter and many others.

Now in it's 4th Season, Black Market Reads is excited to offer more fascinating conversations, hosted by Lissa Jones, continuing the dialog around creativity and cultural production within Black American literature.

ABOUT BMR HOST, LISSA JONES:

In addition to her role as Black Market Reads host, Lissa Jones serves as creator, executive producer, and host, of 'Urban Agenda'  the longest continuously running program on KMOJ Radio, Minnesota's oldest Black radio station, providing weekly coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions affecting urban people of color, with special emphasis on using history as a teaching tool.

Ms Jones authored 'Voices of the Village' a column in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, a Black woman-owned and led newspaper. She is a frequent presenter on the intersection of black history and present day thought, on Black historical figures and movements.

Black Market Reads is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Production services provided by iDream.tv.

Media Avails at Twin Cities Book Festival on October 13, 2018:

Herman Milligan, Board Chair, The Givens Foundation for African American Literature

Lissa Jones, Host, Black Market Reads

A. Raphael Johnson, author, Kimbilio Fellow, Minnesota Book Award finalist for The Through

To Schedule Interviews, Contact
Edie French, BMR Executive Producer, 612.789.3500