MINNEAPOLIS - s4story -- The Givens Foundation for African American Literature celebrates the launch of it's sixth season of the Black Market Reads podcast with media partner iDream.tv and welcomes back host Lissa Jones for a new series of insightful interviews with Black authors. The kick-off episode of Season 6 of Black Market Reads, features an interview with author Claudia Rankine about her latest work Just Us: An American Conversation, (Graywolf Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Season 5 of Black Market Reads concluded with an invigorating discussion of Afropessimism, by Dr. Frank B. Wilderson, III following interviews with memoirist Carolyn Holbrook (Tell Me Your Name and I will Testify), Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation (Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth), a livestream event in partnership with Walker Art Center featuring Seph Rodney (Personalization of the Museum Visit), and an audience enhanced partnership with Minneapolis Institute of Art featuring Grammy Award-winning ensemble Sounds of Blackness Gary Hines and Mapping Black Identities curators Esther Callahan and Keisha Williams.

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Where can listeners find Black Market Reads?
Listeners can enjoy Black Market Reads on Apple Podcasts, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, Libsyn, Sound Cloud, and many other popular podcast platforms, or subscribe to the latest and legacy episodes through BlackMarketReads.com, where lovers of literature can "go deeper" to learn more about the authors, see them in performance, and get a taste of what inspires them.

Archival episodes of Black Market Reads feature conversations with writers as diverse as children's author Justice Alan Page, historian Dr. William Green, screenwriter Michael Starrbury, flash-fiction writer Desiree Cooper, magical realist A. Raphael Johnson, as well as Danez Smith, Patricia Smith, Roxane Gay, Mat Johnson, Sonya Renee Taylor, Duchess Harris, Mary Moore Easter, Artika Tyner and many others.

Visual inspiration for Black Market Reads is supported by internationally acclaimed artist Ta-coumba Aiken.

"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

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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 89.9 FM 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's organizational leadership practice supports training for organizations looking for relevance in an equitable and diverse world, and her personal coaching practice creates leaders who amplify the ideals of a just society.

About The Givens Foundation for African American Literature
In 1972, the Givens Foundation was established to provide scholarships in support of the academic success of African American students who wanted to go on to higher education. In 1985, the Foundation's mission took on a literary focus when twelve  families partnered with the University of Minnesota to purchase a 3,000 piece-collection of African American Literature from a collector in New York. Today, our literary arts education residencies, African American author series, community reading campaigns, and programs for writers illuminate the cultural resources and creative imagination found within African American literature to enrich cultural understanding for diverse audiences of all ages.

Support for Black Market Reads
Black Market Reads is made possible by Target and 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.