Saeed Jones is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer whose first collection of poetry, PRELUDE TO BRUISE, was a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His 2019 memoir, HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES, won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. And his second poetry collection, ALIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, is a 2023 winner of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the only national juried prize for literature that confronts racism and explores diversity. In this episode, Annmarie and Saeed talk about weaving both joy and sadness into poetry and what it means to speak each other’s language in grief.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices