A short take on six frequently featured authors in the College Language Association  (CLA) Journal.

Written by Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on six frequently featured authors in African American Review.

Written by Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on the large number of African American literature courses offered at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Written by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm

A short take on  August Wilson and film adaptations of his work. 

Written by Nicole Dixon.

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on the rise of Marvel's vampire hunter. 

Written by Stephyn Phillips.

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on novelist-turned-television writer and producer, Nichelle Tramble Spellman. 

Nicole Dixon and Howard Rambsy II.



Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on Marc Olden -- a prolific,  less well-known novelist. 

Written by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on Storm, an African woman who has the power to control weather. 

Written by Stephyn Phillips

Read by Gigi Monroe

A short take about our podcast -- a project that offers commentary about popular and critical responses to African American novels, novelists, and more. 

Written by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on the adaption of the novel Waiting to Exhale into a film.

Written by Nicole Dixon

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on how Ta-Nehisi Coates envisions a team of women special forces in the comic book Black Panther.
Written by Howard Rambsy II
Read by Kassandra Timm. 

A short take on the History of Black Writing's expansive collection of novels. 
Written by Howard Rambsy II
Read by Kassandra Timm

A short take on surveys of African American literature.
Written by Elizabeth Cali and Howard Rambsy II
Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on the Toni Morrison Society's Bench by the Road project.

Written by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm.

A short take on a character that many readers view as one of the smartest characters in African American fiction. 
Episode by Howard Rambsy II
Read by Kassandra Timm

A short take on Oprah Winfrey's contributions to film and African American literature. 
Written by Nicole Dixon
Read by Kassandra Timm

A short take on John Stewart, an African American character who became the premier Green Lantern for a generation of fans.
Episode by Stephyn Phillips
Read by Gigi Monroe

A short take on responses to a novel-turned-musical. 
Episode by Carmin Wong
Read by Kassandra Timm

Among the most taught, most discussed, most notable novels by Black women, we can trace Harriet Jacobs’s legacy. 
Episode by Elizabeth Cali
Read by Gigi Monroe

A short take on responses to a novel-turned-film.  
Episode by Nicole Dixon
Read by Kassandra Timm

Are the people who ban books ever right, if only by accident? 
Episode by Kathryn Warren

Kathryn Hamilton Warren is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Arlington. She specializes in American literature.

Read by Kassandra Timm

A short take on how Static and Static Shock reflect the expanded dimension of novelistic storytelling by Black creative thinkers.   
Episode by Stephyn Phillips
Read by GiGi Monroe

A short take on an interconnected thread of intellectualism in novels by black men.
Episode by Howard Rambsy 
Episode read by Kassandra Timm.

Terry McMillan's novel was among a chorus of late twentieth-century books that signaled a reawakening in the African American cultural imagination and revealed a strong interest in the representation of Black love, romance, and marriage.
Episode by Aneeka Ayanna Henderson.
Episode read by Kassandra Timm.

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Aneeka Ayanna Henderson is a professor of American Studies at Amherst College. She is the  author of Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture.

A short take on how students at a college in Georgia respond to Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal."
Episode by Jennifer Colatosti.
Read by Kassandra Timm.

Jennifer Colatosti is Associate Professor and Interim Associate Chair of English at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction, and since 2018 has co-organized the literary festival Revival: Lost Southern Voices.

Despite revieing positive reviews, why  did Sutton Griggs have some unfavorable feelings about the circumstances surrounding his first book?
Episode by John Gruesser.
Read by GiGi Monroe.

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Senior Research Scholar at Sam Houston State University, John Gruesser is the author of A Literary Life of Sutton E. Griggs: The Man on the Firing Line (Oxford University Press 2022), the editor of Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction (Texas A&M University Press 2022), and the co-editor of a scholarly edition of Griggs’s 1905-06 novel The Hindered Hand (West Virginia University Press 2017), a Broadview Edition of Pauline E. Hopkins's 1901-02 serial novel Hagar's Daughter (2021), and African American Writers Respond to Poe, a special issue of the journal Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation (2023).

Here's a short take on where all those Black Women Writers courses come from. 
Episode by Howard Rambsy II.
Read by Kassandra Timm. 

Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give  found a raw edge that audiences were keen to address. 

Episode written by Ebony Lumumba, Ph.D. -- an associate professor and chair of English at Jackson State University.  She writes, teaches, and thinks most about Black women's resistance and Global South literature.

The episode is read by Kassandra Timm. 

College students are often excited to discuss the subtle radicalism of Iola Leroy by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. 
Episode by Emily VanDette -- Professor of English at SUNY Fredonia.

The 1990s gave way to a vibrant literary outpouring of African American novels that offered myriad representational possibilities freeing readers and writers alike.
 
Episode by Richard Schur -- Professor of English at Drury University. He is the author of Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law and co-editor (with Lovalerie King) of Justice Unveiled: African American Culture and the Law.
Episode read by Kassandra Timm

A graphic novel engages black history and Captain America.
Episode by Stephyn Phillips. Read by Kassandra Timm.  

A brief take on a photo titled "The Sisterhood, 1977," which has been a source of inspiration for countless readers and viewers. 
Episode by Courtney Thorsson. Read by Kassandra Timm. 

Courtney Thorsson, an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Women’s Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels and The Sisterhood: Black Women's Literary Organizing, an interpretive cultural history of The Sisterhood forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Courtney is grateful to poet and scholar Harryette Mullen for her work to correctly identify the women in the photo. 

How an excerpt from an upcoming novel became a popular short story. 
Episode by Kenton Rambsy.

Here's why Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy, Margaret Walker Alexander’s novel Jubilee and John Oliver Killens’s novel ‘Sippi are held in high regard by most black folks from Mississippi.
Episode by C. Liegh McInnis -- poet, short story writer, author of eight books, former editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and nationally noted Prince scholar. 

Here's how a book can be initially misunderstood and ignored, then gain literary recognition and acclaim, become adopted by the education system and taught broadly, and then become banned. 

Episode by Richard Schur.  Read by Kassandra Timm. 

The story of Richard Wright’s Native Son, the first black American best-seller, a novel that is both a shocking page-turner, and a philosophical provocation stirring controversy to this day. 

Episode by Joseph G. Ramsey, a professor of English and American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.   Read by Kassandra Timm

Here's how high school students at a school in Maryland responded to Toni Morrison's the Seven Days from Song of Solomon.  
Episode by Abbey Morgan. 

A brief discussion of the prolific scholarship on African American novels by scholar Trudier Harris.
Episode by Howard Rambsy II
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Paul Beatty’s novel The Sellout became the first novel by an American to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2016.
Episode by Cameron Leader-Picone 

College students at one university have expressed a range of feelings about the many new words that they encounter when reading Colson Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist. 
Episode by Howard Rambsy II
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

The multifaceted responses to a novel about a Black woman becoming
Episode written by Shanna G. Benjamin 
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

What can we learn about the differences among the 11 novels Toni Morrison published when we consider her word usage?
Episode by Howard Rambsy II

The stories behind the reception to Larsen’s novel.
Episode written by Donavan Ramon 
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

The multifaceted responses to Walker’s novel
Episode written by Kathy Lou Schultz 
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Key responses to a murder mystery published in the early 20th century
Episode written by Alisha Knight 
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

A fresh conceptual framework emerges that gives us tools to discover unique ways to engage with classic novels, like Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.
Episode by Christel Temple 
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

A brief narrative about Ernest Gaines's novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman being adapted into a movie and becoming an instant classic. 
Episode by Keith Clark
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Who would’ve thought that a joke-telling novelist would have one of the largest vocabularies in African American literature? 
Episode by Howard Rambsy II
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Men of various backgrounds and identities who are all incarcerated at Parchman met weekly to discuss Jesmyn Ward’s novel.
Episode by Ebony Lumumba  
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Ebony Lumumba, Ph.D. is an associate professor and chair of English at Jackson State University.  She writes, teaches, and thinks most about Black women's resistance and Global South literature.

Why did Octavia Butler become so popular on Wikipedia in 2018?

Episode written by Howard Rambsy II and Kenton Rambsy 

Have you ever wondered about the African American novels with the largest vocabularies? A look at literary data offers some answers. 

Episode by Howard Rambsy II

Pauline Hopkins published three novels in three years. How did she do it?
Episode by Elizabeth Cali
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Sometimes a novel proves controversial, and the writer finds herself in a courtroom.
Episode by Richard Schur
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Richard Schur is Professor of English Program at Drury University. He is the author of Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law and co-editor (with Lovalerie King) of Justice Unveiled: African American Culture and the Law.

In October 1937, an aspiring, 29-year-old author wrote a negative assessment of a recently published novel. Here's the story of what happened next.

Episode written by Howard Rambsy II
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

The story of how Black writers and intellectuals made sure that Toni Morrison's novel would be acknowledged for decades. 
Episode written by Courtney Thorsson
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

Understanding the reception to Ward’s novel  

Episode written by Ebony Lumumba. 

Ebony Lumumba, Ph.D. is an associate professor and chair of English at Jackson State University.  She writes, teaches, and thinks most about Black women's resistance and Global South literature.

The extraordinary reception to a novel about an escape from slavery. 
Episode written by Howard Rambsy II and Elizabeth Cali   

Remarkable Receptions is a podcast where scholars provide intriguing, unusual, illuminating, surprising, controversial, popular, and little-known responses to African American novels.