J Wortham is a sound healer, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, author of a forthcoming nonfiction collection “Work of Body,” and a 2025 Rabkin Prize winner. You can read their full bio at our website.

We invited J to have a conversation about their work. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of J in their home office in New York featuring an art piece by Alisha B Wormsley.

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity.

Mentioned in this episode:

* Black Futures edited by J Wortham and curator Kimberly Drew (One World, January 2020)

* Still Processing podcast

* “In Defense of the Traditional Review” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker, July 2025)

* “For ‘Purpose’ Cast, Navigating Revisions Became a ‘Juggling Act’ ” by Salamishah Tillet (The New York Times, June 2025)

* TikTok Queer Ultimatum Season 2 review by J Wortham

* Channeling, J Wortham’s Substack newsletter

* Writer Rebecca Solnit

* Hilton Als’ Instagram account

* Hanif Abdurraqib’s Instagram account

* Sculptor Simone Leigh

* Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2023)

* “ ‘I will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk” by J Wortham (The New York Times Magazine, May 2024)

* “The Artist Upending Photography’s Brutal Racial History” by J Wortham (The New York Times Magazine, May 2021)

* “The Lives They Led: Wafa Al-Udaini” by J Wortham (The New York Times Magazine, 2024)

* Stars and Stars with Isa podcast

* Writer Colleen Kinder

* Dear Lord, Make me Beautiful by Kyle Abraham

* Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies at the Brooklyn Museum (2024)

* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha by Julia Masli

* Black Quantum Futurism books

* The Lightning Field by Walter D. Maria

* Roden Crater by James Turrell

* The Star Axis by Charles Ross

* Storm King Wavefield by Maya Lin

* Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt

* Native American mounds in Madison and Dane County, Wis.

* Jupiter Magazine

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the eExecutive dDirector of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews also includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copyediting by Katie Avila Loughmiller and Karen Samelson. Music is by Flint, HaHaHa, Ben Hendler and Loya. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rabkinfoundation.substack.com