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Friday Feature: The Purposeful Practice of Joy Dear Friend of the Page, As May arrives, it invites us to take a moment and reflect. Not to chase joy. Not to perform it. But to practice it. This week, I have been sitting with the work of Ross Gay, who reminds us that joy is not a temporary emotion reserved for perfect days. It is something we return to. Something we tend. Something we notice on purpose. For instance, on sunny days, when the warmth radiates through the windows

H. WordSmith Reads Black Writers’ Studio | MidWeek Reflection Dear Friend of the Page, Today, I listened to the African American Studies podcast, and it stirred something in me that I cannot set down. But honestly, this reflection didn’t start there. It began yesterday. I found myself in a Substack room, reciting an original poem out loud. And somewhere between the first line and the last, something in me settled. Not perfectly. Not completely. But enough for me to recognize

Dear Friend of the Page, We've reached the last Sunday in April, and I want us to rest here for a moment together before we continue. This month, we've been exploring rhythm. Not the kind that expects perfection or performance, but the kind that meets you where you are. It's the beat that adapts when life feels heavy, that supports you when things are uncertain, and that reminds you: you can always come back to the page, in your own time. We have also named grief. Not as some

Friday Feature: Ross Gay Joy as a Daily Practice Ross Gay, a poet and essayist, writes as if joy is something you can practice, not in a forced or showy way, but through the quiet habit of noticing. His work, especially The Book of Delights, grows from small, daily moments: a shared glance, a ripe tomato, a kind gesture between strangers. Still, his joy is never naive. It lives alongside grief. It acknowledges violence. It remembers history. But it insists on something: Ther

Black Writers’ Studio: MidWeek Reflection Listening as Practice, Writing as Response Dear Friend of the Page, There are seasons when the page feels quiet. Not empty. Just waiting. Waiting for something to stir it. This week, I want to talk about podcasts. Not as background noise, but as part of a writer’s practice. They can help us listen our way back into rhythm. I have been listening to conversations rooted in African American Studies: new books, new scholarship, and new wa

Black Writers’ Studio: MidWeek Reflection April — National Poetry Month Dear Friend of the Page, There are times when you have to see yourself whole and healthy, even when trauma tells a different story. Let’s begin there. Because rhythm is not just about sound. It is about steadiness. It is about returning to yourself when the world tries to scatter you. April is National Poetry Month, and poetry—at its core—is rhythm. Breath. Timing. The sacred decision of when to speak and

🌿 H. WordSmith Reads | Sunday Sanctuary On Building a Life That Can Hold the Work Dear Friend of the Page, There are seasons when the world asks more of us than we have to give. Strength is expected. Clarity is expected. Forward motion is expected. And yet, inside, something quieter is asking to be tended with care. A sentence. A breath. A return. This is where the writing life truly begins. Not in discipline alone, but in devotion. Because a writing practice, at its core, i

❧ H. WordSmith Reads | Friday Feature Langston Hughes and the Crystal Stair Dear Friend of the Page, Leaving Georgia for Wisconsin was not my choice. When I arrived and was trying to settle in, I visited the library. A librarian gave me a collection of Langston Hughes’s poetry. I can’t recall the title, but I remember the poem. I remember “Mother to Son.” I have carried it with me ever since. I named this piece “Crystal Stair” because that line has always stayed with me. When

H. WordSmith Reads Black Writers Studio | MidWeek Reflection Dear Friend of the Page, April is here, bringing National Poetry Month with it. It’s a time to return to rhythm, to breath, and to the space between what is spoken and what is kept inside. This week, I’ve realized something important: Rhythm isn’t just decoration in our lives. It’s a vital force, a way to survive . For Black people, there has always been so much that had to remain buttoned up, contained, translated,

Black Writers Studio | Mid-Week Reflection ✍🏾 Eating the Elephant: On Rhythm and Returning to the Line Dear Friend of the Page, I can hear Chicago now, asking me, “How do you eat an elephant?” I would scrunch up my face and say what seemed obvious. Elephants are far too majestic to be eaten. And he would laugh. Then, gently, like he was placing something in my hands that I would need later, he would say: “If you decided to eat an elephant, you’d do it one piece at a time.”

Sunday Sanctuary | Dear Friend of the Page When You Are Writing Underwater ❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧ Dear Friend of the Page, This week, something new began. A job. A rhythm. A set of expectations that ask me to show up, to learn, to move forward. Maybe you, too, are entering new routines or experiencing the pressure of fresh demands that ask you to adapt, to hold steady, to be present. If so, you are not alone. At the same time, I am carrying grief that makes everything act lik

H. WordSmith Reads Sunday Sanctuary | When the Grief Is Still Warm ❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧ Dear Friend of the Page, There are moments in a writing life when the page feels farther away than it has ever been. Not because you have lost your voice. It is something else. But because something in your life has changed so much that words have not caught up yet. Grief does this. It settles into the body. It changes the flow of a day. It interrupts the rhythm you thought you understoo

H.WordSmith Reads Friday Feature | Craft books are our recipes ❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧ Dear Friend of the Page; On Wednesday, we sat with the rupture. We named it as we cried. We gave it language as we flinched. We refused to look away, even as anger rose. Today, let’s look at what keeps us going when writing is hard. Because it will be. There are days when writing feels as though we are reaching into something unfinished. Days when the sentence won’t land. Days when the work

❧ Black Writers Studio | Midweek Reflection Dear Friend of the Page, In many of our stories, there comes a moment when something breaks. That break changes what was there before and makes everything that follows feel different. Writers know this moment well. We circle it, sometimes avoid it, and often return to it. This is what we call the rupture point. If we are not careful, this break can overshadow the rest of our story. The Craft Question Your trauma might be closer than

❧ “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” — Gwendolyn Brooks ❧ Thread of the Page: Literary Community ❧ Sunday Sanctuary Dear Friend of the Page, Each Sunday, we step into the quiet room of the page, listening for what reading and writing reveal. The Sacredness of the Writing Circle Earlier this week, we reflected on the role writing circles play in the literary community. Today, in the quiet space of Sunday Sanctu

❧ Friday Feature H. WordSmith Reads Where Writers Begin: The Quiet Power of the Circle Dear Friend of the Page, Before there was a website. Before there was a structure. Before, Dear Friend of the Page had a rhythm of Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. There were tables. Library tables. Coffee shop tables. Folding tables in community rooms. And sometimes there were no tables at all — only the small glowing squares of a Zoom room where strangers gathered with notebooks in thei

❧ MIDWEEK REFLECTION H. WordSmith Reads Dear Friend of the Page, On Sunday, we asked a question together: What happens to a community when a writer writes the truth from love? We first approached that question through the work of Ralph Ellison , whose writing reminds us that truth often begins by illuminating what a society would rather leave unseen. Sometimes the first task of a writer is simply this: to make visible what has been deliberately obscured. Then we turned to Z

Sunday Sanctuary: How does Zora Neale Hurston answer the question? A quiet letter about reading, reflection, and returning to the page. Dear Friend of the Page, On Friday, we asked a question that can hold a whole tradition: What happens to a community when a writer writes the truth from love? Today, in Sunday Sanctuary, I want us to sit with the same question again—because one question can open a wide room. And every writer enters that room with their own scent, their own ca

Friday Feature: What happens to a community when a writer writes the truth from love? A literary conversation built around a question drawn from a writer’s work. Dear Friend of the Page, As the week begins to close, we return to the writers whose words still ask something of us. This week, we are sitting again with Ralph Ellison, with that line that keeps rising like steam: “Conflicts are there. But after all, that's where the steam comes from… I am led to affirm many of the

Dear Friend of the Page, March is the month when we return to the craft. Not hurriedly.Not anxiously.But with intention. The Black Writers Studio Series is our time to sit beside the writers who came before us and listen closely—not just to what they wrote, but to how they understood the work itself. Today, we sit with Ralph Ellison, whose novel Invisible Man stands as one of the towering works of American literature. Many readers know Ellison through that single novel, but