What female authors inspired you?
I love Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Audrey Lorde, and Bell Hooks. In fact, I cannot imagine being the man that I am if I didn’t come at some point to reading all these amazing Black women writers, these amazing Black women storytellers. I need to say that first and foremost: there is a direct connection between my mother and my aunts and my grandmother, and these great women writers.
What do you say to the young writers who are really trying to find their voice so that they are not afraid or ashamed?
The first thing that I say to folks, because I noticed that people were hesitant to even call themselves a writer or storyteller, you have to claim who you are. … I’ve been writing professionally for over 30 years. I’ve never stopped reading. You have to be as excited about the first piece you ever published as you are the most recent piece. … I wrote a piece when Cicely Tyson died last week, a poem called “For Cicely Tyson.” I am as proud of that piece as I am of my cover stories of Tupac Shakur or the cover story I wrote on Stacey Abrams last year for The Washington Post Magazine. … I think we got to keep that childlike energy around the art of storytelling, you gotta always love what you do.
