Welcome back to Honing In and to my interview with Dr. Eric Darnell Pritchard.

Dr. Eric Darnell Pritchard (they/them) is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and Brown Chair in English Literacy and Associate Professor of English at the University of Arkansas. They are also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. They earned their BA in English-Liberal Arts (magna cum laude) from Lincoln University, the nation’s oldest historically Black college and university (HBCU). They also earned an MA in Afro-American Studies and a PhD in English (with distinction) from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Dr. Pritchard’s research and teaching focuses on the intersections of race, queerness, sexuality, gender and class with historical and contemporary literacy, literary, and rhetorical practices, as well as fashion, beauty, and popular culture. Originally from Queens, NY, they are an award-winning writer, teacher, cultural critic, and self-described Black queer feminist alchemist. Their newest book, Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams, will be published on January 13, 2026.

Here are some of the things Eric and I discuss:

• Eric’s journey of studying Patrick Kelly and relaying his life with honesty and compassion
• How studying an artist can help us re-see ourselves as artists
• Biography as an intensive labor of love, an ancestral relationship, and an act of necromancy
• The collaborative artistic partnership for Eric’s forthcoming picture book, Clothes to Make You Smile
• The classroom as place to create the world we want to live in

Resources & Links:

• Eric’s website
• Eric’s first book, Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy
• Pre-order Eric’s forthcoming picture book in collaboration with illustrator Shannon Wright, Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams
• Eric’s chapter in The Oxford Handbook of African American Women’s Writing
• Eric will be speaking on October 9th for the School Library Journal Day of Dialog
• Eric will be signing copies of their book at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Conference in Denver this November
• The Community Literacies Collaboratory and their magazine, The Sandbox
• The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism by Audre Lorde
• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
• How to Not Always Be Working: A Toolkit for Creativity and Radical Self-Care by Cody Cook-Parrott
• Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby

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Big thanks to Softer Sounds Studio for podcast editing and support.