Tressie McMillan Cottom is the author of Thick and Other Essays, a columnist for the New York Times, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a 2020 McArthur Fellow. Tressie talks to Gabe about the kind of freedom she wants for all Black women. And how her mother was a member of the Black Panther Party in Winston Salem, NC. We learn about Tressie's 18 stages of essay writing. And why are white audiences more comfortable thinking about Black people in a historical context?

Visit Tressie McMillan Cottom's website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram

Read Tressie's column in New York Times

Buy Tressie's nonfiction book Thick and Other Essays

Watch Tressie on The Daily Show

More episode resources and links

Email Gabe Hudson: [email protected]

Follow Gabe on Twitter and Instagram

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Merve Emre (contributing writer at The New Yorker)

Charles Yu (National Book Award Winner)

Diksha Basu (author of Destination Wedding)

Qian Julie Wang (NYT's bestselling author of Beautiful Country)

About the Host:

Gabe Hudson is the author of 2 books published from Knopf. His honors include being named one of Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists,” PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist, the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction from Brown University, a fellowship from Humanities War & Peace Initiative at Columbia University, and Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His writing has appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times Magazine. He was Editor-at-Large for McSweeney’s for 10+ years. He served in the Marine Corps. He teaches at Columbia University.  

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