It's our season finale, and we're joined by writer and performance artist, Junauda Petrus-Nasah. We discuss the spiritual elements, pleasure politics, queerness, and family dynamics of her young adult novel, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them. We also get into our love of Whitney Houston, abolition work, and the need to deprogram our internalized restrictions on pleasure.

Junauda Petrus-Nasah is a writer, a soul sweetener, runaway witch, and performance artist of Black-Caribbean descent, born and working on Dakota land aka Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work centers around wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer, and liberation. Her first YA novel, The Stars and The Blackness Between Them received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. She is currently working on several projects including her second novel Black Circus, a puppet show, and writing for film.

Resources

• The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus
• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good edited by Adrienne Maree Brown
• Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming by Antonio Michael Downing

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This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.

Our music was created by Tasha, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.