Venita Blackburn, Writer and Professor

September 19, 2021 00:30:08
Venita Blackburn, Writer and Professor
Fresno's Best
Venita Blackburn, Writer and Professor

Sep 19 2021 | 00:30:08

/

Show Notes

Today we have Venita Blackburn on the show. Works by Venita have appeared in newyorker.com, Harper’s, Story, McSweeney’s, Apogee, Split Lip Magazine, the Iowa Review, DIAGRAM, Foglifter, Electric Literature, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Paris Review, and others. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship in 2014 and several Pushcart prize nominations. She received the Prairie Schooner book prize for fiction, which resulted in the publication of her collected stories, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, in 2017. In 2018 she earned a place as a finalist for the PEN/Bingham award for debut fiction, finalist for the NYPL Young Lions award and recipient of the PEN America Los Angeles literary prize in fiction. Her next collection of stories, HOW TO WRESTLE A GIRL, will be published in the fall of 2021 by MCD books.  She is the founder and president of Live, Write (livewriteworkshop.com), an organization devoted to offering free creative writing workshops for communities of color. Her home town is Compton, California, and she is an Assistant Professor of creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

Venita's Website 

Outline of Topics

Book Recommendations 

James Baldwin Everything

Toni Morrison Sula

Marjorie Liu Monstress Vol. 1

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone This Is How You Lose the Time War

Brian K Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, and Matt Wilson Paper Girls 

Venita's books Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl

Our Patreon Page 

 

Other Episodes

Episode

September 17, 2024 00:05:47
Episode Cover

Fresno's Best Podcast Update: Fresnolandia, New Podcast Series, and Soliciting Questions

There's been a lot of changes going on behind the scenes, so I thought it would be important to take a minute to update...

Listen

Episode

March 09, 2024 00:39:54
Episode Cover

Emily Dewise, Founder of Emmie's Swim School and Certified Instructor

Today, we have Emily Dewise on the show. Emily is the founder of Emmies Swim School, where she gives swim and aquatic instruction. Coming...

Listen

Episode

February 02, 2025 00:40:52
Episode Cover

VA Central California Health Care System Conversation

We have a special episode for you today with some of the leaders of the VA Central California Health Care System. We brought in...

Listen