Madhuri Vijay reads an excerpt from her novel "The Far Field," with an original Storybound remix.

Madhuri Vijay was born and raised in Bangalore. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine, and Elle India, among many other publications. The Far Field is her first book, and won the second JCB Prize for Literature, India’s most prestigious literary award.

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Shayla Lawson reads is an excerpt from her book This Is Major, with an original Storybound remix.

Shayla Lawson is the author of This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls & Being Dope, and three poetry collections. She has written for ESPN, Salon, Guernica, Vulture, and The Cut. She's a MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, and is a 2020 National Book Critics Circle Finalist.

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Laurie Frankel reads an excerpt from her forthcoming novel "One Two Three", with sound design and music composition from Anna Tivel.

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of three (going on four) novels. Her new novel, One Two Three, is out June 8, 2021. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time. She was recently named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Seattle where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

Anna Tivel is an American singer-songwriter from Portland, Oregon. She has released four studio albums on Portland-based Fluff & Gravy Records. Her 2017 album Small Believer received positive reviews and was named a "Top 10 underheard album of 2017" by Ann Powers of NPR.

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Mark Russell reads from his comic "Second Coming".

In 2015, Russell made his comic book debut with his critically acclaimed reboot of the 1973-74 comic Prez about a teenager who is elected to serve as President of the United States. Following Prez, Russell was hired to write The Flintstones comic book series for DC Comics, winning two Eisner Awards, including Best Limited Series and Best Humor Publication. Russell followed up with another DC venture titled, Exit, Stage Left!: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, reinventing the titular Hanna Barbera character as a gay southern gothic playwright living in 1950s New York. For this, Russell won the 2019 GLAAD Award for Outstanding Comic and was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Writer and Best Limited Series.

Music in this episode was provided by Epidemic Sound and includes the following artists: Da Sein, Dylan Sitts, and LoFive.

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Robert Jones Jr. reads from his debut novel "The Prophets", with an original Storybound remix featuring Josh Garrels.

Robert Jones, Jr. is a writer from New York City. He received his B.F.A., magna cum laude, in creative writing, and M.F.A. in fiction from Brooklyn College. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Essence, and The Paris Review. He is the creator and curator of the social justice social media community Son of Baldwin, which has over 250,000 followers across platforms. Jones was recently featured in T Magazine’s cover story “Black Male Writers of Our Time.”

Singer/songwriter Josh Garrels has built his career on deeply personal, introspective lyrics and exploratory sounds that range from pastoral indie folk to hip-hop. Emerging in the early 2000s, he is the co-founder of Small Voice Records, on which he issued 2008's Jacaranda. In 2015, he landed on the Billboard 200 with Home.

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Deesha Philyaw reads from her book "The Secret Lives of Church Ladies", with an original Storybound remix featuring GLASYS.

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, "The Secret Lives of Church Ladies" was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for The Story Prize (2020/2021), and longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, dead housekeeping, Apogee Journal, Catapult, Harvard Review, ESPN’s The Undefeated, The Baltimore Review, TueNight, Ebony and Bitch magazines, and various anthologies. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and a past Pushcart Prize nominee for essay writing in Full Grown People.

GLASYS (Gil Assayas) is a pianist, synthesist, producer and vocalist who delivers intricate virtuosic keyboard parts, electronic soundscapes and impassioned vocals in one package that combines his many influences including Electronic music, Alternative Rock, Jazz and Classical music.

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Shayla Lawson reads "Black Lives Matter, Yard Signs Matter," which is an excerpt from her book This Is Major, with an original Storybound remix featuring Maita.

Shayla Lawson is the author of This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls & Being Dope, and three poetry collections. She has written for ESPN, Salon, Guernica, Vulture, and The Cut. She's a MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, and is a 2020 National Book Critics Circle Finalist.

MAITA is a Portland, OR based musician who's music has been described by Consequence of Sound as "anxious heartbreak that rips somewhere between Mitski and Summer Cannibals.

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Soraya Nadia McDonald reads her essay "Wandering In Search of Wakanda", with an original Storybound remix featuring Marco Pavé.

Soraya Nadia McDonald is the culture critic for The Undefeated. She writes about pop culture, fashion, the arts, and literature. She is the 2020 winner of the George Jean Nathan prize for dramatic criticism, a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the runner-up for the 2019 Vernon Jarrett Medal for outstanding reporting on black life.

Marco Pavé has forged a twin identity as a champion of indie Southern rap and as an educator working to stimulate community activism and entrepreneurship through the lens of hip hop music and culture. Pavé has opened for Mobb Deep, Waka Flocka Flame, and Young Dolph and worked with GRAMMY Award-winning producers like Carlos Broady. Pavé's work has been written up in outlets like The Source, The Root, and MTV News. In 2017, he released his debut album Welcome to Grc Lnd, which cast a documentarian lens on Memphis’s grassroots activists who were raising their voices in protest of the city’s endemic racism and poverty. In 2018, he was commissioned to turn the album into Memphis’s first-ever rap opera. 

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