Her work has appeared or is forthcoming at Electric Literature, LiteraryHub, Brevity, Monkeybicycle, and Eat, Darling, Eat. Diane is the recipient of an ArtsFairfax Artist Grant, and beginning Fall 2022, she will be the Darden Professor of Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. She is also the creator of Grief Writing Sundays, a popular writing class on telling difficult stories that has met every week since the start of the pandemic. There, she created the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than six hundred writers over twelve seasons.

She received her MFA from the University of Florida and was the longtime membership director for AWP, The Association of Writers & Writing Programs. If you’ve ever felt alone on your journey into the writing world, the words of these poets are for you.Diane Zinna is the author of THE ALL-NIGHT SUN (Random House, 2020) which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and the Cabell First Novelist Award. By capturing the radical love ethic of Blackness amid incessant fear, she has amassed not only a wealth of knowledge about contemporary Black poetry and poetry movements but also brings to life the historical record of Black poetry from the latter half of the 20th century to the early decades of the 21st.Įxamining cultural traditions, myths, and music from the Four Tops to Beyoncé, Bingham-Risher reflects on the enduring gifts of art and community. Noting the frustrating tendency for Black artists to be pigeonholed into the confines of various frameworks and ideologies-Black studies, women’s studies, LGBTQIA+ studies, and so on-Bingham-Risher reveals the multitudes contained within Black poets, both past and present. Each essay also delves into how her own life and work are influenced by these elders. Each essay is thematically inspired, centered on one of her interviews, and uses quotes drawn from her talks to showcase their philosophies. Examines firsthand the lives of legendary Black writers who made a way out of no way to illuminate a road map for budding creators desiring to follow in their footstepsĪcclaimed Cave Canem poet and essayist Remica Bingham-Risher interweaves personal essays and interviews she conducted over a decade with 10 distinguished Black poets, such as Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Patricia Smith, to explore the impact of identity, joy, love, and history on the artistic process.

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