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In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay talks with Tomas Moniz about his new novel, The King of Aloe Vera. Moniz discusses Ray, a 75-year-old widower whose unexpected friendship with a young woman named Q draws him out of grief and back into community. Set in San Francisco, the novel explores aging, identity, housing insecurity, intergenerational connection, and the challenge of addressing social issues.  Tomas Moniz is an East Oakland–based writer whose novels also include Big Familia, and All Friends Are Necessary. He also edited the Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies and teaches creative writing. Follow Tomas Moniz on Social Media:Instagram -  @tomas_should_be_writing Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amanda Moore interviewed Sheryl Lister, the author of All My Sisters and Me. In her novel, four women explore the dynamics of sisterhood, love and family, while learning more about themselves along the way.  Sheryl Lister is a multi-award winning author and has enjoyed reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She is a former pediatric occupational therapist with over twenty years of experience and often says she “played” for a living. Follow Sheryl Lister on Social Media: Instagram - @sheryllister  Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay welcomes back Randal Maurice Jelks for a powerful conversation about My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy. Their discussion explores Hughes not only as a beloved poet of the Harlem Renaissance, but also as a deeply political writer whose essays, speeches, travels, and commitments to working-class struggle still speak urgently to questions of race, democracy, justice, and belonging today. Jelks reflects on Hughes’s global vision, his roots in Black radical traditions, his defense of the Scottsboro Boys, and his enduring insistence that America must be claimed and challenged by all of its people.  Dr. Randall Maurice Jelks is a professor, documentary producer, and award-winning author whose work examines African American history, religion, politics, and culture. His writing has appeared in publications including the Boston Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as in journals, newspapers, blogs, and other periodicals. He is also co-editor of the academic journal American Studies. Follow Randal Maurice Jelks on Social Media: Facebook - @RMJofNOLA Instagram - @randalmauricejelks_books  Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, contributor Tayyba Kanwal interviews Hasan Dudar, author of Carryout.  Carryout is a collection of linked short stories rooted in the Arab diaspora in Toledo, Ohio. In this conversation, Tayyba speaks with Hasan about how these vivid, intimate stories about an immigrant family from Palestine and Lebanon brim with humor, wit and tenderness, even as they grapple with the disorientation of displacement. They travel across generations, intrigued by how an evolving sense of identity and home complicates what surviving and especially thriving means for these vibrant characters. Hasan Dudar is an award-winning writer, documentary producer and a graduate of the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His fiction has appeared in journals such as Gulf Coast and Pinch, and his reporting has appeared in various publications including USA Today, Bloomberg News, and Aljazeera America.Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay speaks with Dr. Rosalee Martin about her book Their Stories, Our Stories: Four Presidents of Huston-Tillotson University. Drawing on her 50 years as a professor at Huston-Tillotson University, Dr. Martin reflects on the leadership, struggles, resilience, and enduring importance of HBCUs. The conversation highlights the presidents she served under from 1972 to 2023, the role of faculty and alumni, the challenges of funding and accreditation, and why HBCUs remain vital institutions today.  Dr. Rosalee Martin is a sociologist, licensed social worker, educator, poet, and artist who retired from Huston-Tillotson University after five decades of teaching. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, and her creative work has appeared in several anthologies, including Experiments in the Jazz Aesthetic, Art, Activism, Academia, and The Austin Project.   Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Kimberly Lau interviews Yu-Mei Balasingamchow about her debut novel, Names Have Been Changed. Their conversation explores Ophir, a Singaporean woman who commits a crime, flees the country, and spends the next decade moving through Tokyo, London, Colorado, and unnamed U.S. locations under changing identities. Lau and Balasingamchow discuss the novel’s themes of diaspora, survival, language, home, and the life-changing act of telling one’s story aloud. Born and raised in Singapore and now based in Boston, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow earned her MFA from Boston University, teaches at GrubStreet, and has received awards and fellowships for her fiction.Follow Yu-Mei Balasingamchow on Social MediaInstagram -  @yumei.balasingamchow Threads -  @yumei.balasingamchow   Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Laura B. McGrath, author of MIDDLEMEN: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction, a revealing study of how literary agents have shaped American fiction, publishing markets, and the literary canon from the 1950s to today.  In the conversation, McGrath explains why agents are far more than behind-the-scenes dealmakers. Drawing on archival research, data analysis, and interviews with more than 75 agents and publishing professionals, she describes agents as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, tastemakers, and career strategists who help determine which books reach readers—and how writers build sustainable literary lives.   McGrath is an assistant professor of English at Temple University. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Before joining Temple, she was associate director of the Literary Lab at Stanford University. Follow Laura B. McGrath on Social Media:Instagram - @laurabmcgrathBluesky - @lbmcgrath

"I wanted to write about friendships that are really, really close, and so they are more complicated, say, than friendships that are less close... And so I wanted to talk about a friendship that isn't always sunshine and roses," shared Naima Coster about her new novel, TAKE WHAT YOU CAN. TAKE WHAT YOU CAN, as Coster explained in the interview, "is a story of two best friends, Millie and Val, who decide to move near one another when they're both pregnant with their girls so they can raise their daughters together. They're both motherless mothers who want to be family to each other, but once they're living in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, things don't go the way they planned, and the ways that their lives have taken different directions becomes really apparent."Naima Coster is a New York Times bestselling author and a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honor. Her novel, What’s Mine and Yours, was a Read with Jenna pick, a statewide read for One Maryland One Book, longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Esquire, Marie Claire, Ms. Magazine, and more. Her first novel, Halsey Street, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and named a must-read by People, Essence, Well-Read Black Girl, The Skimm, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Naima’s work has appeared in The New York.Follow Naima Coster on Instagram - @naimacoster  Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

ire'ne lara silva's latest book, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, is a collection of lyrical and rhapsodic stories wrought from dreams, history, spirituality and erotic longing. In the interview with Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay, ire'ne discussed the way she connects with readers emotionally, the inspiration for her stories, and engaging mortality and pain with her characters..ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, andthe eaters of flowers, which won Gold for the 2025 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book (ILBA), a comic book, VENDAVAL, and two short story collections, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán, and the light of your body.   Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:  Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview  Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

"It's a heist novel... and invariably in the aftermath, something goes wrong, something goes sideways, something that...O'Connor, the mastermind, didn't see coming, because he's quite the plotter and planner. But, for once, even he is caught flat-footed..." remarks Gary Phillips, author of the novel THE HAUL, in his interview with Hopeton Hay, host of Diverse Voices Book Review.O'Connor, is a middle-aged Black man living a quiet life, semi-retired from his thieving days, when an old contact provides an opportunity of a lifetime: to rob a tech billionaire's secret bunker. Set in the Los Angeles area, Phillips reveals through flashbacks with O'Connor as a preadolescent "what is it that made the boy the man."Gary Phillips has published novels, comics, novellas, short stories and edited or co-edited several anthologies, including the Anthony-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, his debut effort more than a quarter-century ago, was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He is also a story editor on Snowfall, an FX show about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central, where he grew up.Follow Gary Phillips on Facebook Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay welcomes contributor Amanda Moore for a lively conversation with bestselling author May Cobb about her novel All the Little Houses. Cobb discusses how the book blends Southern suspense, family drama, and small-town secrets in a 1980s Longview, Texas setting, where social status, jealousy, and hidden resentments collide. The conversation also explores Cobb’s inspiration from Little House on the Prairie, her return to East Texas as a literary landscape, and the ways her characters reveal what can lurk beneath polished surfaces.May Cobb grew up in the piney woods of East Texas where her thrillers A LIKEABLE WOMAN, MY SUMMER DARLINGS, THE HUNTING WIVES and BIG WOODS are set.Follow May Cobb on Social Media:Instagram: @may_cobb Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amran Gowani interviewed Kathleen Rooney, bestselling author of the contemporary novel MAN OVERBOARD!. They discussed what's ailing modern men, the “death cult” of capitalism, her unfashionable fascination with clowns, the nourishing power of literature, and why men should read more fiction.  Kathleen Rooney is the nationally bestselling author of LILLIAN BOXFISH TAKES A WALK, as well as CHER AMI AND MAJOR WHITTLESEY and FROM DUST TO STARDUST. She has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books. Kathleen’s criticism can be found in The New York Times, Chicago Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and beyond. She lives in Chicago and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University. Follow Kathlen Rooney on Social Media Instagram: @poemswhileyouwaitBluesky: @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social  Folllow Amran Gowani  on Social Media:Instagram: @amrangowaniLinkedIn: @amrangowaniBluesky: @amrangowani.com Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Abir Mukherjee, author of the thriller THE PINNACLE. In the novel, a washed-up American actor living in India wakes up from a drunken stupor one morning to the discovery of his murdered Bollywood star wife. In the interview, Abir discusses how his experiences working with the super-rich in India helped inspire the novel.Abir Mukherjee is the Times bestselling author of the Sam Wyndham series of crime novels set in British colonialist India. Follow Abir on Social Media:X - @radiomukhersInstagram - @radiomukhersBluesky - @radiomukhers Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

On June 28, 2014, Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Danielle Allen about her newly published book, OUR DECLARATION: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality for Austin radio station KAZI 88.7 FM. Featured on the front page of the New York Times, her book publisher writes in its description of the book, "Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty." The interview was originally published as a podcast episode on July 4, 2024. Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy and director of the Democratic Knowledge Project and of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. Daniell Allen's latest book is RADICAL DUKE: How One Aristocrat-and the American Revolution-Transformed Britain. Follow Danielle Allen on Social Media:Bluesky - @dsallentessTwitter - @dsallentessFollow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social

In the latest episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, media scholar Sarah J. Jackson chronicles the contributions of Black mediamakers since the 1700s in advocating for freedom in her new book A SECOND SIGHT: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom. In the interview with host Hopeton Hay, she explained how she used W.E.B. Dubois's concept of second sight as her framework for writing about the unique view that Blacks have of America. Jackson reviews the contributions of many Black mediamakers from journalists to podcasters to digital creators to filmmakers and more, from the past and the present—to provide a holistic view of the challenges and progress of Black Americans toward realizing the freedom promised in democracy.Sarah J. Jackson is a scholar of race, media, and politics, her other works include #HashtagActivism (2020) and Black Celebrity, Racial Politics, and the Press (2014). She is an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change Center. Follow Sarah J. Jackson on Social Media: Bluesky at @sjjphd.bsky.social, or on Instagram at @sarahjjacksonphd. Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review  Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social