Clint Smith reads an excerpt from "How the Word Is Passed," backed by an original Storybound remix with Taber Arias, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America," which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is also the author of the poetry collection "Counting Descent," which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.

Clint has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.

Taber Arias is an artist from Portland, OR who's been making music since 2015. He also makes instrumentals under the name "hi, ily" on all streaming platforms.

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