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Some books arrive in our lives at exactly the right moment. Others wait patiently until we are ready to understand them. I remember encountering Wintering  by Katherine May  for the first time by chance. The bright orange cover caught my eye as it passed across the circulation desk, the word itself— wintering —lingering with me longer than I expected. At the time, December had arrived, but winter had not yet made itself known. The sidewalks were still clear, the light had not

Listening, Remembering, Becoming MLK Week does not end with answers. It ends with listening. After seven days of reading, writing, and witnessing, today is an intentional pause—a space to sit with what has been stirred rather than rushing to resolve it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  understood the necessity of reflection. He knew that action without grounding risks becoming reaction, and that clarity requires quiet. Today, we do not introduce a new text. We do not assign a new

There is a quiet moment that comes at the end of any meaningful reading journey. Not relief; Not closure; But recognition. We recognize that the words we have read cannot be returned to the page unchanged. That something has shifted—however subtly—in how we see the world and our place within it. This is where Dr. King always intended for reading to lead: not toward admiration, but toward responsibility. This week, we have encountered  Martin Luther King Jr.  not as a monument

There is a temptation, when we talk about Dr. King, to speak as though his work belongs entirely to the past. We mark anniversaries. We quote speeches. We celebrate victories already won. And in doing so, we sometimes imply—quietly, unintentionally—that the work reached its conclusion with him. But Dr. King never believed that. Near the end of his life, King spoke less about dreams fulfilled and more about demands unmet. He warned that racial justice without economic justice

History often asks us to choose one voice. One leader. One tone. One way of telling the truth. But movements are not built on singularity. They are built in conversation—sometimes harmonious, sometimes tense, often unresolved. Dr. King understood this. So did James Baldwin. Though they shared an era, a commitment to Black dignity, and a fierce love for truth, Martin Luther King Jr.  and James Baldwin  are often positioned as opposites: hope versus rage, nonviolence versus con

There are moments in history when the ground feels unsteady—when the language of division grows louder, when fear moves faster than facts, and when many of us sense, quietly or not, that something is breaking. We are living in one of those moments now. Political unrest has become a constant hum in the background of our lives. Elections feel existential. Public discourse feels brittle. Neighbors speak past one another, if they speak at all. The word community  is invoked often

I lost my last copy of Why We Can’t Wait  on a city bus many years ago. I don’t remember where I was headed that day or who was sitting near me. I don’t remember the color of the seat or the stop where I realized the book was gone. What I remember is the strange calm that followed—because even without the physical pages in my hands, the words had already taken hold. They stayed. They echoed in the quiet way truths do once they’ve been fully heard. Long after the cover was gon

When many people speak about Dr. King, they speak most comfortably about love. Love, in our collective memory, has been made gentle. Harmless. Easy to admire and easier to misinterpret. It has been framed as patience without urgency, kindness without confrontation, and unity without accountability. But the love Dr. King wrote about—preached about— lived by —was none of those things. In his sermons, King presents love not as sentiment, but as discipline. Not as a weakness, but

Day 1: Beyond the Soundbite Today, if Martin Luther King Jr.  were still with us, he would be turning 97 years old. That alone is a staggering thing to sit with—to imagine the length of a life, the wisdom accumulated, the conversations we never got to have. If you were raised in the South, like I was, you might remember how this time of year always came with ritual. The television movie King  aired annually, and without question, we gathered around the screen to watch it agai

In the previous Writer to Writer reflections, I wrote about becoming a writer through the act of writing, and about what happens when we finally commit to the truest sentence we know. This essay lives inside what comes next—the slow, unsettling work of writing ourselves. Ernest Hemingway is often quoted as saying, “Writing is easy; all you need to do is sit at the typewriter and bleed.” These days, many of us have traded in our typewriters for laptops, tablets, or note-takin

Writing is not ghostbusting until you sit down and write the most actual sentence you know. That sentence, if you let it, can turn into a memoir. So much has changed for me since I decided to write about myself that I sometimes wonder if I still want to write about myself. Do I still want to confront and engage with these ghosts? Do I still want to open doors I once worked hard to keep closed? The answer is yes. Yes, because words hold power and meaning. Yes, because I have b

As the calendar flips from February to March we begin setting our sights on the end of winter, the hope of Spring and Women's History...

It began with my friend Facebooking me, "Honey Word Smith, what are you doing that Tuesday?" To which I replied, "This right here!" I...

In the previous Writer to Writer reflection, I wrote about ghostbusting—about what happens when we commit to writing the truest sentence we know. This essay begins just before that sentence is written. What comes first, the writer or the writing? At first glance, this sounds like a philosophical question—the kind meant to be debated rather than answered. But most writers encounter it in a much more practical way: sitting in front of a blank screen, waiting to feel like a writ

I lit the match and threw it; it burned from November 2020 until now. Setting my life aflame happened in stages, and now as 2021 draws to...

Editor’s Note:  This post was originally written years ago, before H. WordSmith Reads had language for what it was becoming. I return to it now not to erase the earlier self who wrote it, but to speak more clearly from where I stand. If you are anything like me, when you hear that an author has passed away, your first instinct is to reach for everything they have ever written. To gather their words close, as if rereading them might keep something essential from slipping away.