Episode 22: Jesmyn Ward + Ayana Mathis (October 24, 2017)

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward talked with fellow author Ayana Mathis about Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward’s beautiful, searing novel of a haunted rural south, in front of a packed house at Greenlight's Fort Greene store location. Mathis and Ward engaged with topics including ghosts as a manifestation of racial violence, the true and horrific history of Mississippi’s Parchman prison, how a writer can push back against dehumanization by depicting the complex inner lives of poor people, the desire to take care of one’s troubled characters, and the ways in which history bears down on the present.