In our latest episode, we sit down with Dhonielle Clayton, whose literary works have captivated readers across the globe. She reflects on her upbringing in a close-knit family that valued literature, sharing how her father's love for books shaped her own passion for storytelling. Clayton discusses the challenges she faced in the publishing industry, particularly as a Black author, and how these experiences inspired her to advocate for inclusivity and diversity through organizations like We Need Diverse Books. We explore her entrepreneurial spirit as she leads Cake Creative and Electric Postcard Entertainment, working to ensure that diverse voices are not just heard but celebrated in the literary world. This episode is a deep dive into the intersection of creativity and activism, revealing how Clayton's journey is not just about her success but about paving the way for future generations of writers.

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Foreign.

What is going on, everybody?

This is an exciting time.

I'm your host, Derek Young.

Welcome to the Reader of Black Genius podcast, where we learn about your favorite writers.

Favorite writers here on the Mahogany Books Podcast network.

I'm excited to be your host today, Derek Young, blurred extraordinaire.

And today's episode is brought to you by sponsor, Mahogany Books.

I am so excited to have a conversation with Danielle Clayton, y'all.

I'm telling you, first of all, I'm excited because she's from, not necessarily my hometown, but kind of sort of my hometown, Maryland's own, I want to say, DC Zone.

You know, that's how we do it in dmv.

We, you know, we always highlight DC as the centerpiece of Everything But Man.

Danielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author, the creative mind behind the wildly popular Controverse series, the Bell series.

She has a numerous other titles, Shattered Midnight.

She's also an entrepreneur.

I mean, activists, educator, like, all around, great person.

And she loves bookstores.

She loves indie bookstore.

So I'm excited to have you here.

Welcome, Danielle, to Reader of Black Genius, the podcast.

How are you today?

Thank you so much for having me.

I know I'm from Maryland, so I know there's some contention in the DMV about who gets top billing, but I am so grateful to be here to be able to talk to you, owner of one of my favorite bookstores in the area.

And thank you for all that you do.

And I'm excited to dive into books with you.

I'm just a book lover and a nerd.

Awesome, awesome.

Well, I appreciate having you here with us, y'all.

So, as you know, what I love to do on this podcast is to talk to my favorite writers, talk to my favorite entrepreneurs, and learn their origin story.

So we're going to get into this because I'm super excited to hear about this, the backstory of Danielle Clayton, how you became, like, this megastar, and definitely your passion for, like, people and making sure they get certain type of information representation in books.

And that's like, you know, we definitely feel the same there.

So I'm really eager for this, for this conversation.

So let's, let's, without delay, let's get to it, let's.

Let's learn about your origin story.

Where did you start?

I mean, I grew up in a small town in Maryland that is just suburban, right?

Like 40 minutes from D.C.

the last stop on the red line.

My parents work for the government, so we'd go into D.C.

all the time.

And my dad is a huge reader and he loves books.

And so I grew up where reading wasn't a choice, where it was part and parcel of my everyday life because my father was constantly reading.

When we were in the car, we were listening to books on tape.

I can remember the sides of the tape turning over as we get to the next part of the story.

I went to the library every single day and the bookstore every single Saturday with my dad.

I was very spoiled.

So I had the biggest childhood book bookshelf.

Um, and I used to just hide in a nook with my books and snacks and be there for hours.

That's all I wanted to do, was to read.

Man, I love the fact that you even to identify being spoiled with books is an awesome thing to identify.

Like, that's something we, you know, we think about being spoiled wolf, you know, shoes and games and all these other things.

But to actually be able to say, hey, you know, books was the thing that spoiled me.

And like this mirror and window into these other universes and the fact your dad was a huge proponent of that, like, I just want to kind of call that out because that does definitely say something to me.

That means a lot to hear that.

I love that.

I mean, in librarian world, we sort of talk about how readers are created in the laps of other readers.

And I was definitely created.

My love of reading was fostered because I spent a lot of time in bookstores and in the library and in comic book stores too.

My dad was a big comic book nerd, loves comic books, collecting them, reading them.

And so I was just surrounded by literature and literacy in practice.

Like every single day, even reading the newspaper.

My grandparents would hand me the newspaper and I'd read it cover to cover, sitting at the table.

So.

So it was a huge part of my life.

And I think it's why I am here, because that's what was sort of fortified in me is that.

And, yeah, totally spoiled, but by books.

And so I could have any books that I wanted.

And I got a new book, two to three new books every week from when I started to read up through high school.

So.

Wow, that was a rotten egg for sure.

You still have a lot of those books in your library.

Like, what did you do with them?

Oh, I mean, they're still in my parents home.

I have a lot of books that are sort of still on the shelves or packed up in boxes.

And so one day I'll unpack them and make this huge, like, Belle from Beauty and the Beast library with a little sliding, you know, ladder and do the whole thing and, and unpack all of those books from when I was a kid.

But yeah, still, still have them.

Okay.

Okay.

So you said red line.

I'm trying to remember what the.

For my non DMV folk out and out and I forget.

I haven't been on the train in a while.

That was my main source of transportation for a good minute there.

Going back and forth to work.

The last stop is that Shady Grove.

Shady Grove, okay, well I was thinking Wheaton.

That's okay.

A few stops ahead.

But Shady Grove is the last stop.

So that was my stop all the way out there.

And I would write, we would write it in to the city.

Okay.

Now I'm curious because what's interesting, like for me, I tell everyone.

So I'm from Southeast D.C.

then we moved to PG County.

And one of the things that is similar with our background is my mom was the huge reader in our, in our family.

And like it was without a doubt, you know, libraries, bookstores.

We go into Landover Mall or Forsville Mall, if there was a bookstore we were stopping in because my mom had this huge collection of books.

So of course me and my sister got were, you know, just like you said, raised in the lap.

Here are some books.

What are you, what are you reading?

But one of the things that I loved about being from the D.C.

area is the culture that we have here.

Right.

It's such a representative culture that we walked into a lot of black owned bookstores when I was younger.

For me, it was something that I wasn't, that I was very familiar with.

I thought every place had black bookstores.

Was that your experience as well?

I mean, we had to go into D.C.

for that because where I grew up, it was very, very white.

And the bookstores didn't reflect that experience.

I remember Crown Bookstore was the bookstore that was closest and the one that we would visit.

And it was, you know, lacking.

But this is the 80s, right?

This is the late 80s.

And I think that there were tons of children's books.

My parents did a great job of finding every single book that had a black child in it for me to read.

Yeah, but I was reading.

I was like a little Matilda, but like reading four or five books a day.

So I was voracious and so they couldn't really.

I read through all of the books that had characters that look like me.

So I was reading everything just because I was so insatiable with what, you know, I loved it so much.

I preferred to be curled up somewhere reading a book.

I Felt like a little cat who wanted to be in a window with a book in the sun, you know, and don't bother me.

It was basically my attitude.

Don't look at me, don't bother me.

Don't ask me what I'm doing.

You see, I'm reading this book.

Tony, you know, don't inter.

I didn't want to go to school.

I loved school.

But also I was like, I'd rather be reading my books.

Like, I had my little.

You know, and then they had the Pizza Hut competitions.

The book, it.

You know, my class would do March Madness.

We're reading the books.

And I was always the winner.

I was a champ.

Undefeated.

Undisputed.

Undisputed.

I could read those pages, and I was trying to really earn my way to my father's bookshelf.

And so because he was reading all of these huge science fiction and fantasy books, and I was trying to get my stamina there so that he would hand me a book from his shelf and say, like, you're ready now.

Wow.

Okay, that's.

I mean, that's okay.

So you're dropping gems early here because, number one, the fact that you were trying to earn your way onto his shelf, right.

To be able to read the type of stuff, which I'm very curious about, to hear about his comic collection and his sci fi collection, because I think me and your dad, you know, we might need to hang out and exchange some books or something.

But the.

You just talk about stamina, right?

And that's something I talk to parents about all the time when they come into the store and they're looking for books for their kids.

And we.

I'm talking like, you got to build up a kid's ability to read to 300 pages, right?

So even if they're starting with a comic, let's start there, because we got to get them used to sitting down for a certain amount of time to actually get through this book to the end.

To make it worthwhile.

Exactly.

And I think it just started little by little, right?

We went from being read picture books every night to then chapter books, and then alternating.

They read a chapter, I read a chapter.

Then to gradually getting me into more middle, lower middle grade.

And then they really just kept handing me another thing over and over again.

And because it wasn't a choice, so it was sort of like, you find what you're looking like what you like, or we're gonna try different kinds of stuff until you find the thing that hits and you're gonna read it.

And it was Easy for me, probably harder for.

I have a younger brother.

Harder for him because he was more like my mom.

If my mom's reading some, she slee so, you know, like more of an audiobook person.

She has to have like all that stimulation, like some.

You know what I mean?

So.

But I loved it.

So I was just so interested in how stories made me feel.

My heart was racing or like I couldn't stop thinking about it.

And so it was.

I was an easy convert, but I had to build the stamina and they were very conscious of that and making sure that I had what I needed to do that.

Okay, okay.

So you're.

You were raised a reader, right?

It came to you, you know, honestly, from your dad, right?

It was something that you built.

I mean, number one, just, even the, the father daughter time around that, right?

To be able to spend time with your family and just have this passion and this love for doing this thing together, these memories you built, you know, it really kind of creates this connection and this love for it.

So I'm curious, like, is, was there something at this young elementary school or middle school age that you read that kind of started setting the bar for you to say, hey, this is what I'm going to do.

Like to start switching the idea from being a reader to a writer or just really start to kind of form you and, you know, your person, you know.

And you used the word catalyst earlier when we were just kind of talking.

But was there something, a book, a black book at that point in those years that really kind of stood out to you?

I think I didn't want to be a writer.

I didn't know I could be a writer, even though I was a reader.

I really thought that all writers were dead and that you wrote a book, you died, and then that book got put in the library or in the bookstore.

Like, I know writers came to my school, so I didn't really understand the process.

Like, I really think that as a young person, I asked my mom about this.

I was like, did I want to be a writer?

She was like, you wrote things, but that wasn't something that you said, because I don't think you knew that it was a real job that you could have, even though there were books you were reading.

So someone was doing something.

I think there is a disconnect, which a lot of young people have.

When I go to these school visits, they're like, wait a second, this is a job.

And.

But when I think what started to activate my imagination was when I was introduced to the Works of Virginia Hamilton.

As soon as I started reading her books, I found my family.

I found myself, and I became addicted.

My dad is from Mississippi, My mom's from North Carolina.

So I spent a lot of time in the Deep south on farm, reading books, dealing with the animals and the heat.

No AC in the.

You know what I mean?

The fan in the window and so.

And the plastic on the couch.

And so I.

That was the center.

Right.

Like, that's where my grandparents came out of that sort of rural farmers, salt type of people.

And so Virginia Hamilton was able to find many different stories within the black Southern diaspora.

And I felt really seen by her.

And I was returning to her books over and over again.

And there's something when I think of, like, my imagination now and like, now that I've become a writer, I think about her.

I think about.

That was the first seed Virginia Hamilton sort of planted in me because she also told stories that had magic and she had collections of folklore.

And I finally found, like, oh, magical black people.

Like, we can have this, too.

It's not just the white kids that get magic.

And that's all I was finding in books.

The black kids didn't get to go on those kind of fantasy adventures.

They had to face racism.

But she found bridges between the two.

And that, I think, was a first sort of catalyst for me as a person that was going to become a writer who didn't want to be a writer at first, but who became one.

I think that was the first seed that was planted for me.

Okay, okay.

Virginia Hampton, was it.

Was there a specific book that stood out for you there from her?

I mean, she has a great catalog.

So it's a great catalog.

So she has her collections of stories.

I mean, the People who Could Fly, her stories.

And then I still have a copy that I never returned back to the library, Sorry, called Willie B.

And the Time the Martians Landed.

And so this is a book that I read over and over and over again as a kid, also Cousins.

And I think Zelie, like, I was obsessed with her work.

I just wanted to be one of her characters, be around her characters, because she found this sort of intersection of black American Southernness, and she infused it with magical realism and folklore and things that I knew existed.

She made my normal spectacular and extraordinary.

And that is.

So that was, I think, invigorating to my little girl imagination, who was always looking for magic and looking for myself and magical stories and unable to find it.

I mean, that what you just said there was.

And I'm Trying to pull the words back together.

But you was talking about how the works that you wrote, how it made you feel.

Right.

Like, there was an emotional aspect to that versus just, you know, reading it for reading sake.

But there was something about it that just made you feel, like, more alive and seen.

And like, that's something that I just.

I'm curious.

I don't want to jump too far ahead in your story, but do you find yourself trying to replicate that now as a writer?

Absolutely.

I mean, that's what I read for.

I read to be moved to either cry or to be pissed off or to have my heart race or to be afraid to make this sort of weird, boring human experience a little bit more exciting.

And I think as a young person, the types of books that I was reading, I can remember how my heart felt like studying and stressed and, like, staying up late because I had to finish it, because I had to see how it ended.

And luckily my parents respected that, even though I'd be sleepy and grumpy the next morning.

But they understood the exercise of, like, becoming obsessive about a thing and, like, wanting to talk about it and, like, it.

Creating a brain wrinkle or whatever, and making me hunt for something bigger or ask bigger questions, basically, of our community, of society, of the world.

And so I'm reading for that, and I'm trying to recreate that.

So in the work that I do, I want to center black children at the table, but make a table for all, but center their experiences and always take the things that were magical to me as a young person.

Going to my grandmother's farm, being around all of my family and having a big, loud, overwhelming, smothering, loving family.

Make that magical, Infuse it with the extraordinary, because that's what it is to me.

And I hadn't seen that done in the way that I wanted it done for all audiences to showcase.

As I became a writer and as I learned more about the publishing business and the book business and book buyers and what goes in the bookstores, I wanted to make a challenge to say, let me take the things that people see about my community and let me make them magical.

Let me make cast iron skillets be the center of magic, you know, because for me, they are.

Because they create such great food out of my mother's kitchen, Right?

Yeah.

Let me make.

You know what I mean?

Church hats that air themselves out on Sundays, like in a Mardi Gras parade, you know, like, let me take the things that were so ordinary to me and so normal and Infused them with magic and put them in my world.

And that all came really from, I think, the works of Virginia Hamilton, building my imagination, showing me that I deserve to be centered.

And so do the people in my family in stories that they're really good stories, and that there was always magic here.

No matter what happened to our community, there's always magic there.

So.

Right.

That's.

That's way of answering your question.

No, no, no, no, no.

That's.

That's.

That's awesome.

I mean, and that's the thing that I think we look to hear, because there's something about when.

When you read a person, like, they're exposing a part of themselves that, you know, most times we don't get access to.

And what I'm always curious about is when you go into your.

And when a writer goes into their head and it's now kind of like building out these characters, building out these worlds, there's part of their personal experience, whether it was.

Whether it was incredible, something exciting and.

And happy, joyous, or there was something that was somewhat painful, that it was.

It open up a weakness, a trauma that they've experienced, that you are putting that into the work.

And to hear about what that.

The positive side, at least from this part of this conversation, what that made you feel for being connected to the black Southern experience.

Right.

Deep South Southern experience.

Right.

It's.

It's one thing to be, you know, from Virginia.

It's a different part to be, you know, have Mississippi roots.

Right.

There's.

There's a part of that experience that doesn't always get showcased.

And that's, you know, so is really.

It's really awesome to hear that piece of it, because I think it does.

You know, I can see that connection now where.

Because I just think I'm remembering back to the conversation we had at the store when you came out for the first marvelous book.

Yeah.

And he was talking about, like, all the magic.

And, like, I'm hearing that, and I just.

I remembered that.

But now having this conversation here is like, oh, okay.

Like, this was, like, foundational.

Oh, absolutely.

Danielle is.

And I wanted to create the thing that I wanted to read as a kid.

Like, I wanted nothing more than to see a black girl with a family like mine embroiled in some sort of, like, magical mystery.

Like, that's what I want.

And I couldn't find that.

I could find pieces of myself.

I could find, you know, roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor, which spoke to a lot of my family's history.

Right.

And that is so important.

I could find great stories by Virginia Hamilton and folklore and folk tales and magic.

And I was trying to find a way to bridge.

How can we have direct conversations about what.

What has happened to us through the lens of magic?

How can I sort of make the thing that I wanted to read when I was 11 and 10, when I was, like, at my peak of just, like, reading from sun up to sundown type of thing?

And yeah, and those.

That's.

Virginia is the first seed, I would say.

Yeah, that's awesome to hear, and I appreciate that because it's something that I even struggle with today.

You know, I'm a huge blurred.

I love my comics.

I love, you know, mythology.

I love, you know, watching and reading about, you know, Egyptian mythology, Roman mythology.

I remember learning about this stuff in school, but every time these things would come up, it never centered me or us.

Right?

And that's.

That's been something that, you know, I'm not a writer, but I've always imagined, like, man, if I could really kind of do this, I would try to sit down and write something like, oh, God, this is not my calling, but I need someone to write these type of books because there's so much history, so much heritage that we have as people from across this, you know, African diaspora, that there's some.

There's too many stories that can be told right, about us and, you know, our heritage.

That's why I love what Tomi is doing, what, you know, you were doing.

There's these ways to introduce us in our story and our history into these books and, you know, to make that connection.

So, yeah, I'm definitely, you know, hyped and eager and nerding out on any of this stuff that.

That you guys produce.

So, yeah, there's so many great black fantasy writers that are really rooting heroes in community and culture.

Right.

Look at the work of Tracy, Dionne and Legendborn.

Amazing, amazing.

You know, taking black American history and weaving it through a lens of King Arthur, right?

Like, yeah, she's brilliant.

The work of L.L.

mcKinney and Bethany C.

Morrow, who's now a local DMV writer.

There's so many people working in tradition, and then we have our West African authors who are also working in their tradition, like Jordan and another.

You know, there's so many.

So many great books now.

Like, ah, Little Girl Me is like, super jealous of kids that get to, you know what I mean, grow up.

Like, like, if I could have gotten Roseanne Brown's Middle grade Surah Boatang Vampire hunters or, like, her romantasy duology.

Like, ah, I would have been so.

Like, I would have been well fed.

I would have had.

And that's what I wanted for young people to have a feast for their imaginations.

Because I felt like I was just piecing things together and hoping.

It felt like duct tape.

My parents were doing such a great job trying to find as many black authors and books as they could, but they were blocked, systematically blocked out of publishing and silenced and muted.

So really difficult.

But now these kids.

No excuses.

No excuses.

I'm just.

I'm sitting here thinking, like, what Don get?

Would.

Would Mama Clayton and Papa Clayton be like, look, look here, you got to come out this room at some point.

You have to go get some sun.

Go run, jump on the swing.

Do something.

It's true.

I mean, they would make.

My grandmother would make me go outside for an hour a day to get sunshine, but I would bring my book with me, and I would go, like, sit under the tree or whatnot.

But she would make me go outside because she believed that fresh air was good.

And you come back in and, you know, getting tired and you smell like the outside, and you get a shower and you get fed.

You know, go get that heart rate up.

Go run.

Go chase some grasshoppers or something.

Exactly.

Go do something.

But I would have my book with me at all times.

It became like a, you know, like, lionesses blanket and, you know, peanuts.

Like, I.

I just felt unsafe without my book.

I still carry a book with me everywhere I go.

Plus my Kindle.

I am never without something to read like, it is.

I don't know, it's like a foundational thing that made me feel like.

I feel, like, naked if I don't have a book with me.

Okay, okay, okay.

So.

So let's jump forward a few years.

So this is in my.

My mind.

I want me to understand.

This is like elementary school, elementary and middle school.

Okay, okay, okay.

As you start getting into, like, high school, you start growing, maturing a little bit more.

Like, what.

Who is Danielle at this point?

Tell us about her.

I guess high school me was in.

In the mix, right?

Like, I went to a Catholic high school because Maryland has a bunch of Catholic schools and you don't have to be Catholic to go.

It's just like, you know, college prep.

And my parents wanted me to really be challenged.

And my independent reading went down because it was so intense.

And, you know, I was taking a Shakespeare class and British history and world history and, you know, and world lit and all of these different classes and having to now read books that other people told me to read, which I never like that.

So I had a lot of opinions, but I slowly and surely started getting introduced to the works of Zora Neale Hurston, who would be, I guess, my next catalyst, and Langston Hughes and his short stories.

And I think that that's when I started, you know what I mean, Growing even more.

And then I encountered Nella Larson's Passing, which I would say is a foundational text for me as well.

And so that got added to the Alchemy, Right.

Like, that started, you know, me thinking about big, huge themes of black history and black people and black communities and how different they are.

The black community in Florida is different than the one in Chicago, is different than the one in the DMV and different than the one in New York.

And so it started filling out the portrait, I think, and started showing me what could be done.

I still didn't want to be a writer, though.

I just love to read so that that dream didn't come until so much later.

But I was just still reading, and I wanted to read what I wanted to read instead of, like, Kate Chopin and all these, like, you know, boring British authors, which.

No shade.

I just was having a hard time connecting because this was my entire life.

And I remember getting in trouble in English class.

I think it was the ninth grade, because I had to read To Kill a Mockingbird again.

And if anybody knows me, knows that I hate that book.

And I do not care if you love it.

I will go off on that book.

And it's not about its quality.

It's about the space that it takes up in the canon and the fact that I had to read it in, like, the seventh grade, and then here it is again in the ninth grade, and then how I.

If I had known it would come back to haunt me when I went to college.

It's about the space that it takes up in the canon.

And I remember, like, going to the principal's office and being like, I'm not reading this book, and I'm tired of this book.

And there's got to be another book.

Like, where's one that centers black voices?

And.

Right.

It's a little bit of a, you know, squeaky wheel.

I like this.

So.

So first of all.

So you read Zora Neale Hurston Larson and Langston Hughes in high school, and it did not corrupt you, so you didn't turn out to be some psychopath.

Like, your brain didn't explode?

No, it Woke me up.

Okay, okay.

Because, you know, the way that we're hearing things now is like those books a little too dangerous for.

For young high school minds.

Like, just.

Yeah, I had some really good high school English teachers who really, I think, tried to think outside the box about who was in their classroom.

And even though there was only a few black kids, they brought forth outside of February some really great literature for us to sink our teeth into or for us to pair.

So, like, we had to read the Great Gatsby.

And she said, you can read the Great Gatsby or you can read Nella Larson's Passage.

And I thought that's.

I was like, okay.

Right.

You know, I read both and it was a great juxtaposition of texts, so.

And it didn't have to be connected to Black History Month.

No, it was outside of, like just.

Such a revolutionary concept.

Who knew?

Who knew?

Do something like that.

That's.

I can't believe it.

I know.

But I did yell about To Kill a Mockingbird, so.

So I'm sick of that book.

Okay.

Okay.

And you know, I.

I appreciate that because there are definitely some books to have to read it three different times.

So you said, was it middle school.

High school, high school?

And then it came back in college and I was just like, not again.

Right.

I took a class on literature of the American south and gave my professor so much hell.

Poor guy.

That was like 19, 20 year old me that was like ready to raise it to the ground.

Right.

Burn it all.

And I just couldn't understand or respect antebellum literature.

Like, right.

Black people.

And then we had to read To Kill a Monkey Bird.

I was like, why?

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, let's stick with Gene Tumor.

Let's stick with.

You know what I mean, Zora.

Let's stick, you know, So I was really frustrated.

So I just get frustrated with certain books and the space they take up in the canon.

Yeah, no, that's.

That's interesting.

I've never read that book.

And I think I'm at a place where.

Do it.

No, no, no.

Yeah, I'm, I'm.

It's interesting.

We just had a conversation.

This is a little bit of a.

Of a tangent here.

We just did.

We had book club this past Friday, so we do it the first Friday of every month and we just read Invisible Ache by Courtney Vance and Dr.

Robin Smith.

And somehow we got onto the conversation of.

Oh.

One of our members brought up the book James by personal Everett, because we were talking about.

We were talking about body racer.

So then it sidetracked to James.

And so I wasn't familiar with the book I've seen.

I know we're selling it, but I hadn't really checked it out to see what the book is about.

So he started telling me about.

He has a retelling of Huck Finn and all this other stuff.

And we got into this conversation similar to what you're talking about with To Kill a Mockingbird.

And it was mostly.

There were some people who were like, yes, I love this Huck Finn story, and blah, blah, blah.

But there was a lot of people saying, hey, this is like, why?

Like, I don't.

I don't need this.

I don't want to read it.

And in my mind, you know, as we were just having this conversation, I was like, you know what?

I know it's a quote unquote classic, but I don't think I want to take up my time to read that book, given all the other books I'm still trying to get to.

Exactly.

Given like, this one precious life that I have and this limited amount of time that I have.

There are other things for me to read.

And the fact that I had to read that book through three times, and I only got to read Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and Nella Larson and, you know, in Gwendolyn Brooks and etc.

Etc.

And Octavia Butler one time.

Right.

Once.

I don't think so.

To have read that in high school, like, I just.

I commend you because that.

That was what was.

Do you mind sharing what school this was?

Yeah, I went to our lady of good counsel.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

They kicked our butt in football.

All right, never mind.

I won't.

I won't bring that up.

That's when I realized I would not make it on the next level.

In football.

I played for Suitland High School, and we did a seven on seven passing camp.

I saw those dudes, I was like, yeah, nah, this is.

I need to focus on the academics.

Yeah.

There's no future for me in football.

Okay.

You need your brain for reading.

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Bookstore.

All right, so.

So you.

You highlighted Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes is a catalyst.

So what was there particular books from them?

Well, I mean, all of Langston's poetry, but when my teacher handed me.

And my teachers would give me books outside of.

Outside of class because I was such a voracious reader, but when I read the ways of white folks.

Yes.

I just thought, oh, My God, my brain just like it was just synergy.

And I think because we were reading a lot of short stories by a lot of white men, getting.

Getting.

Being able to read these kinds of works by.

By black people and being like this was hidden from me.

That's how I felt.

I felt actually quite betrayed that the curriculum and the curriculum in the 80s and 90s hid so much brilliance for me from my own community.

That could have.

I don't know, just like I could have arrived at becoming a writer earlier had I known so many people had walked before me and created a path for me to follow.

But I wasn't exposed.

So.

And that was just really frustrating, you know, especially as I become a high school student and I.

I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.

I didn't know that that is something that I could do, that I could walk those same steps and do that.

But getting exposed to Zora and Tony, Toni Morrison as well, having to read beloved in the 10th grade and not being able to sleep, because there was something fundamental about it that haunted me.

And that's what I'm looking for in a book.

Right.

And Beloved, I can't even return to it now because I know that to open that book is to become haunted again.

But it is something that shows up in every single one of the books that I write.

That it's even fantasy that.

That tree on.

On her back.

Right.

Like, I think about it all the time.

And so I'm always looking for that experience of being haunted by a book.

And it just.

Those were writers that I felt like I wish that I had gotten to meet earlier in my life.

I was reading at a high, you know, not that I could have understood it, but starting in the ninth grade, I wish that I had been given what we do.

Right.

Earlier.

Right.

I think I would have arrived at my path earlier.

My mom says I arrived when I was supposed to arrive.

However, I just feel like, God, I wasted so much time trying to be a doctor and then, you know, doing other things when I could have just arrived here.

Yeah.

And I know.

I mean, the journey is important, so I definitely get what your mom is saying there.

But there's also something to the idea that, you know, our educational system is not really fully meeting the needs of all of our students.

And, you know, the way that you just described it there of hiding parts of us, you know, when you're supposed to be there to help unveil life for kids.

Right.

And your parents tax money is going into this process, but yet we're.

We're in a moment that these things are just, you know, not even being touched on.

Right.

As an option.

And I'll say that, you know, you were a.

You know, and because you were showing it through your eagerness of wanting to read, but the fact that you're educated, that your teachers were sharing these books with you outside of class.

Right.

Is.

Was a huge opportunity for you because that wasn't happening for everyone.

Everyone doesn't get those kind of teachers that actually take the time out to try to nourish other kids when they show a certain kind of promise.

No, absolutely.

My teachers, and that's why I became a teacher, really fortified me.

The good ones were like, you've got something in you, kid.

Let me give you more to.

To build this fire.

Right?

Let me give you more to feed your imagination.

Also, you're better in class when you're continuously reading.

So let me continue to make sure that you have something to read so that you're not talking, you know, like in.

You know what I mean, in the drama.

So, like, they really did give little teenage me things to think about, things to read, you know, And I just felt like, while I'm reading, Nathaniel Hawthorne, why am I not.

You know what I mean?

Why am I not exposed more to Phillis Wheatley and to more, you know, Frederick Douglass and all these other writers?

I just was looking.

I think I'm always looking for balance.

Meeting your students where they are and what they need, you know, and what we need is to know.

I needed to know that there were such powerful, excellent, wonderful black writers who had written amazing things, and to be able to be exposed to that.

But, yes, shout out to my teachers and my librarians, who I annoyed, for sure, with my requests, and they did their best to meet them, and I.

Give them to work.

That's.

That's what happened there.

I did.

I put them to work.

Yeah.

A lot of questions and a lot of requests and demands.

And remember, I was very spoiled.

So when I went in there, I wanted what I wanted.

You know, when you have a very good dad and a very good grandfather who would always take me to the library after school and, you know, bring me my lunch, right?

I wanted a hot lunch.

Granddaddy would bring me.

Papa will drop that lunch off every day.

And so I was used to getting what I wanted.

I wanted to read all the things.

So.

Right.

What does this know, this adult is not giving me access to the stuff I want.

Right.

What is happening here?

Yeah, I know I was like, I'm just gonna call my granddaddy.

So call my granddad.

I love it.

I love it.

Okay, so the Ways of White Folks for Langston Hughes.

Was there a certain title for Zora Neale Hurston?

I mean, everything.

I mean, from Dust Tracks on a.

On a Road to Their Eyes Were Watching God to.

I was just fascinated by what she found, right.

What she was able to create.

Make magic out of, like, creating these people who I think she took overlooked people, people who the outside world would think we don't care about their stories, cares about them.

They're in these small towns.

They have no money, but they are in these deep relationships that are rooted in so much trauma and history.

And she just made magic out of them, so.

And she wrote in vernacular, which challenged me for sure, because it challenged all the respectability politics that my parents were raised in in order to lift them out of the mud.

Right.

But she captured something that was so.

I don't know.

So that felt like she found the root and gotten to the root of us.

And I just loved it.

I just think I thought she was masterful.

So.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So anything.

Zora Neale Hurston.

Yes.

That's.

That's.

That's catalyst for.

For Danielle.

That was like, team me, you know, as I'm filling my.

Well.

Okay.

All right.

So at what point as you're heading toward graduation, your.

Your teenage mind is developing, you know, so you mentioned becoming a teacher.

Was that the goal?

Because, you know, you worked as a librarian.

Was.

Was that the goal?

I also heard you say something about.

A doctor, like, yeah, I graduated high school, and I went to Wake Forest University, and I was pre med.

Okay.

The first doctor in the family.

And then I encountered chemistry, which is really hard.

It was hard in 10th grade, and it's even harder as a freshman in college when you're away from home for the first time and you're very spoiled, and you have to share a bathroom with, like, 20 other girls who are not clean, and you are.

And the food is not good, and you are just having a meltdown.

Right.

And 911 was the first week of my college experience.

Are you serious?

Yes.

That was the first week of classes for me.

So it set the tone for that whole year, which was I needed to get out of pre med, and I failed it.

I got an F, was the first F I'd ever gotten in my life.

And I studied and I had a tutor and all of that.

And it's just chemistry is really hard, balancing equations, and it wasn't my thing.

And I was away from home for the first time as a spoiled brat and a rotten egg.

Didn't have my mom or my dad and my comforts in my own room, in my own bathroom, all those things.

And so I sought refuge in the bookstore that was.

There was only one bookstore in Winston Salem, North Carolina, at the time.

Time.

And I would go there because I had a little car, because I was spoiled again.

Here we go.

That's the theme.

The theme of my story.

And I would go there, and I would spend a lot of time actually going back and rereading the books that I loved as a kid and returning to those as, like, a comfort blanket of being like, God, I've got to read all this crap for.

You know what I mean?

For my English classes again.

Here comes Skill and Mockingbird again.

Let me find some joy in other things.

And so I started rereading a lot of.

And that is where I think it started to.

I started to say, maybe I shouldn't be a doctor.

Also, they make doctors look at dead bodies.

And so they made us look at, like, a cadaver.

And I kept thinking the whole time, what if it woke up?

And I was like, this is not what doctors do.

Zombies.

I'm thinking all this stuff.

I was like, maybe I'm not a doctor.

Maybe for me.

And so then I changed my major to an English major and started taking all these classes.

And I took an African American literature class and got to really seep in to the classics.

But I was really fascinated with children's literature, Black children's literature.

So then I started focusing on that, and I thought, okay, I'll be a teacher or a scholar.

And so I graduated with my English major, and I got.

I went directly into a master's program in children's literature to focus on the Brownie book and, like, and all of the ways that black people try to fortify their children with magazines and children's books and children's stories and thinking about what is missing in children's books.

And so that's how I made the bridge.

And I was just a teacher at the time in getting this master's and thinking I can tell people what to read.

I can help kids.

And that's how my interest in children's literature, that's how I got there, by failing.

I always tell kids I failed into this job.

That's.

I got an F.

And it changed my life.

And I studied and still got that.

Sometimes it happens, right?

I completely understand my.

My chosen career from the time I was.

I want to say maybe middle school was to be an architect.

I love drawing.

I love building stuff.

My father worked construction.

He told me I couldn't do what he did.

I had to do something better than he did.

So I was like, okay, well, what's one level up from a.

From a construction worker?

Architect.

Fantastic.

I spent all my junior high, high school career preparing to be that.

I got to my first year in school, college, and I took physics.

I barely made it out of physics.

I said, no.

I said, no, this is not.

This is not going to work at all.

Then.

Yeah, so it changed everything for me.

So I.

I completely.

I don't even know if I.

I probably blacked that out.

I don't even know what grade I got.

I probably, like, have just blotted out that time for my.

Because I can't remember what I got at class.

It was ridiculous.

Like, why?

Why?

It's rough.

Okay.

That math is rough.

I remember taking astronomy and thinking, oh, I'm just gonna learn about the planets and Pluto isn't a planet anymore and blah, blah.

No, it's math.

Yeah.

It's not learning just about the planets.

It's gravitational force.

I got bamboozled.

And I just realized that I didn't want this type of grief in my life.

I wanted.

And the thing that made me so happy and felt safe was to return to reading.

And so that's where the books came in.

But still not a writer.

Still not a writer yet.

I was like, I don't know.

Still not a writer.

So.

But finding that comfort in a bookstore, like, which number one speaks to my heart.

Like, I love that.

But, yeah, that I.

You.

Creating your safe space right at this university, away from your family and finding that.

You know what my comfort zone are these books, especially these books I read as a kid that just kind of give me that peace, that calm, and all this hectic hecticness.

That's not a word.

That just kind of settles you.

Yeah, it settles.

It was grounding me and it was.

Reminded me of like, oh, I remember loving this.

Why did I.

What happened to that?

Oh, right.

Going to high school and college prep and doing the IB program and having all these extracurriculars and being in the drama and in the mix and having to read books that.

You know what I mean, I had to write papers on versus getting to choose love to read and missing independent reading and how important that was as a foundational concept in elementary and middle school that goes away in high school and being like, oh, I can study Children's books.

I could become a teacher or a librarian or write scholarly papers on children's books.

And that's how I found my way.

Yeah, to that.

Okay, so, so you, so you finished a master's program.

Do you immediately become a teacher, like an in class teacher or like, what happens?

My master's program at Holland University was a low res, but really it's six weeks every summer.

I teach there now, and I love it.

And so every summer when I was, I would, you know, I was teaching third and fourth grade.

And then I also taught at a ballet school across from Archbishop Carroll for years.

And every summer I would spend my summers in Virginia, in Roanoke, getting my master's.

And so I did that.

I think it took me three years, maybe.

Yeah, until I had to do my comps where I had to read every single children's book.

So that's one of the reasons why I know my stuff, I feel like, because I was forced to read every single thing and know the history.

And so I was teaching and trying to figure out what am I going to do.

It was helping me in my classroom pick better books, create reading culture, helping parents and teachers and everyone at my school build a reading program and community.

And so.

But the, the program forced me to take two writing classes.

It was the first time I'd ever taken a writing class.

Fiction and all different kinds of things.

And I had two professors that said to me, the first one, her name is Hilary Holmes, she's wonderful writer.

She said to me, she was there, I know you're a teacher and that's great.

And I know you like books, that's great, but you're a writer.

And I said, I'm not a writer.

Not a writer, no, ma'am, I'm not a writer.

And then she said, you're a writer.

And I was like, okay.

And then I let her believe that.

And then I had to take all these classes and stuff.

And then I had my final class and I had to write my final paper.

And I was writing on black futures, right.

And like the fact that at the time there were very few books that featured black children in the future in science and fantasy.

And there was this book by Nancy Farmer, a white woman called the Ear, the Eye and the Army.

And I talked about what was missing from that text and, you know, and, and sort of, you know, where are black children in the future and where are those imaginations?

And I had a professor who shall not be named who said to me in our final debrief after he read My paper.

And was like, this is great.

And he was like, well, what are you going to do with this degree?

And, you know, with your life?

Are you going to keep teaching?

Because, you know, black people don't really become writers.

This was a white man.

It's like, they don't become writers.

They don't.

This is not something that is popular in your community.

And I said to him, I'm going to become the most famous person to ever graduate from this program, and I'm going to create more books on the shelves than anyone else.

And that fueled me.

It was an anger that I had because I thought, what are you talking about?

I come from a deep tradition, a deep well of tradition of black writers.

Like, what do you mean?

And so that's when I became a writer, when he said I couldn't do it.

And so.

And it was a challenge.

And I said, challenge accepted.

And now he has to teach with me.

And my class is the most popular.

So.

Dude, do you, like, mail him every book you have published?

Like, I'm just like, here's another one.

Like, how do you say that to somebody?

Yeah, he just said it so casually.

He just said, like, it was so belittling and, you know, flippant, sort of like, well, what are you gonna do?

You become a writer?

Because that's, like, not something I.

And I think he was speaking to the fact that publishing did not allow black voices in.

So there were very few, in the larger scheme of things, books that featured black kids.

And I think that he was giving me some sort of cautionary warning about, find something else to do because you're going to be blocked.

But instead of fortifying me and helping me keep the light on above my desk and, like, write the things and do the things, he told me basically to go do something else or said I couldn't do it because my community didn't do it.

Do it without addressing the fact that we have been muted and kept out of publishing, which is a different thing.

So I said to myself, I was like, I'm gonna make sure that you can never not know that I've had an influence in children's books.

And so, yeah, that's why I became a writer.

That was the.

That's when the light came on and said, work on your craft.

Now you go get an MFA in writing for children.

Now you learn to be the best.

Get the highest terminal degrees in your field, and you go.

And you create a tidal wave.

Right?

That's what I did.

That's.

Yeah.

Moved to New York and got that mfa, and now I have the two highest degrees I can get in my field.

Or I did at the time and just started making.

Making moves and mischief.

I.

I love it.

That's the day you became a writer, like all this other time and join all these other books, but this person.

Yeah.

To make that statement.

Wow.

When you tell me I can't do something, oh, yeah, my parents are like, oh, I was that kind of kid.

Like, I was like, I'm gonna find a way.

Wow.

You know, I don't want to be an NBA star.

I'm five one.

Like, nothing like that.

It's more of like, what can I do with my tools and with my gift?

What can I do?

I know I can do this, and you tell me I can't do it.

I'm gonna do it.

Right.

So here it is.

You have started to become the date, the Danielle Clayton that we now know.

Right.

So I'm just curious.

I know you've, you know, told this part of your story, you know, so many times about, you know, becoming a writer and stuff like that.

And, you know, there's a lot of other great shows and podcasts to talk about that, but the thing that we really try to make sure we focus on here is, are the books that help to define you as a writer.

So you've identified a lot of them.

I'm just curious at this time, was there something that stood out to you that really.

So you have this statement, maybe this book that maybe helped to connect the two for you, or was it just really this statement that said the books you read before that defined who you was going to be as a writer and then the statement, or was there something else there that kind of helped to, like, put the.

Put the icing on the cake there?

I think what it was is that once I said, okay, I'm going to do this, and I moved to New York and started to get my mfa, and I started my job as a school librarian in East Harlem, New York.

I started searching for what was out there, because if I was going to make impact and I was going to write and I was going to try to find some activism, like.

Like, I needed to know inventory.

And so then I started finding Jacqueline Woodson and I started seeing, okay, so here we do have.

And Rita Williams Garcia.

And I was like, okay, so now we have.

I was like, okay, there are some people here that are creating works that are in conversation with Virginia Hamilton and our greats for this generation of children and all of my students were black and brown students.

Most of them were first and second generation from all over the.

You know what I mean?

From West Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and then also from the American south, right?

And so I thought, I've got to build these imaginations of these kids coming to my library.

But also double duty.

Let me see.

Let me see what else is out here.

Let me cook.

You know, I'm seeing Andrew Davis Pinkney and the Pinkneys in general.

I'm, like, getting my inventory and figuring out what can I do.

And so.

And how can I find a space for me?

Because I'm always looking for magic, right?

I'm like, who's writing magic and where is magic?

And so I think it is finding Jackie and finding her work that was like a lightning bolt and say, okay, and Ms.

Rita and saying, okay.

So here we go.

Here are some what I call lighthouses that I can really think through.

What is the landscape of children's literature, black children's literature, look like right now?

And I got really lucky.

So living in New York is really hard.

You have to have.

When you are a librarian who's making, like, $30,000 a year, you have to have other jobs.

And so I was a tutor for a decade.

And one of the kids that I got to tutor, her mom, happened to be an editor at Scholastic, happened to be Andrea Davis Pinkney.

And I got to meet her, and she became my mentor.

And it was just this sort of like cosmic two planets colliding, me helping her with one of her kids who I love, get through her regents, and then me being able to tell her that I am in an MFA program, that I want to be a writer, that I am a children's librarian at a school that I'm trying to figure out how to break in, that I'm learning a lot about.

I'm also interning for a literary agent reading Slash, and I want to learn business.

And she taught me.

She told me what to do and how to do it.

Because right now, we were using the term multicultural literature, right?

We were looking at the texts and seeing how they were packaged and how they were sent out to bookstores and who got siloed and who didn't.

And there was still an African American section in many.

And she really demystified so much for me.

And it was one of those things.

It was fate that I got to be paired with her through the book, the tutor agency I was working for.

And it changed the course of my life because she gave me the Tools for my toolbox to be able to start really making some noise and writing the things that I wanted to see on the shelves.

Yeah, yeah.

I love that.

Because I think one of the things that, you know, we.

We talk about it when I talk to other entrepreneurs, people who are looking to start their own business, and they're asking, like, you know, how did we get here?

Like, first of all, y'all don't understand how long it took us to get to here.

Right.

So there's no overnight success.

This is.

Yes, yes.

14 years in the making or whatever.

And it's the preparation.

So what I'm hearing from you is a lifetime of reading, of state, of studying, of making books, your thing, your center.

And knowing these worlds has been created.

When you meet a person who is open to being a mentor, they find a person who is prepared to actually to not to waste their time to receive.

Right, right.

And that's a major part of this, that as you're going through life, you have to make sure you're prepared.

So when you meet someone, when opportunity is presented to you, you can step right into it and start running with it right away.

Absolutely.

And that starts in the home.

I think being raised by parents who came out of the civil rights movement really fortified me and prepared me.

They told me that that was the most important thing is the preparation, is the training, is all of those things so that I could be ready to receive the wisdom or receive the opportunity and to know how to make my own opportunities.

And so that I was very lucky to grow up in a very entrepreneurial household where my grandmother had many businesses because she had to.

Right.

She talked a lot about how her family didn't want to have to rely on white people in Mississippi in the 30s, in the 20s and 30s.

So they had to make their own clothes, make their own flower.

You know what I mean?

Grow their own food, and then they would sell the rest to the black community so that therefore, they could fortify everyone.

And so I just grew up in that kind of ecosystem.

So I was.

They were preparing me.

I remember even balancing my grandmother's checkbook at 11 and her giving me a little mad money for that, just to teach me the skill of how to balance something.

Right.

And how to balance and make a ledger and bills.

And so I think that they were preparing me so that I would be ready for the world.

And I think when it came to books, that I was prepared.

I was prepared because this was something I was really passionate about.

And I think you can't replace that you have to find the thing.

This is why I tell young people, find the thing that you love, that you're crazy about, that you're wild about, that you're obsessed with, and see what you can do with that.

And I've been obsessed with books since I was a little kid, since I first.

First learn how to read.

I remember the first picture book my mom read to me.

She can't stand it now.

I send it to pictures of it to her all the time.

It's called A Weekend With Wendell by Kevin Hinkes, about a bad mouse who comes over and terrorizes the house.

My mom can't stand a bad house guest, and so she had to read that to me every night.

I know every word.

And so I just.

Ever since I learned to read, I was obsessed with, like, how books made me feel.

And I think that that made me ready.

When my mentor.

This is the hero's journey.

When my mentor showed up, when Andrea showed up, it just became like I was ready for her.

I was like, okay, I have the questions that I need answers to.

I'm ready to hear what I need to hear.

This is an awesome.

So we're nearing the end here, and this is an awesome transition to your legacy because you're doing so much in addition to.

To being a writer.

Right.

And I'm.

I'm a huge number one.

I'm a huge fan of what you're doing.

I'm just so excited to see how you're combining.

And I have a huge love for entrepreneurship because I think it's the.

It is the most core way we can empower our community.

Just like you said, your grandparents.

Right.

I don't want to depend on anybody.

Right.

So I'm going to do it for myself and create enough for other people to come in, and it benefits them as well.

And what you're doing as an entrepreneur, as a founder, is fantastic.

So I want to talk.

I want to have you talk about what you're doing now, this legacy you're leaving for other people to be able to step into and do their thing and live their dreams.

Absolutely.

So one of two things that I do is one, I'm board chair now of We Need Diverse Books, where we believe that every kid deserves to walk into a bookstore and see themselves reflected on the page.

And when this movement launched, I felt like, oh, my gosh, this is an opportunity for me to put my activism to the test and really get in there and put some, you know, put some pressure.

The same way I went into my Principal's office and said, I'm tired of Tequila Mockingbird.

Like, this is my chance.

I'm a short, tiny tyrant.

I'm, like, ready to fight.

Like, let's go.

Is that of a T shirt?

Where's that at?

That needs to be on a T shirt?

Yeah, that's it.

That's what Jason Reynolds calls me when he wants to mean to me.

He's like, you're a tiny tyrant.

You're so short and so mad and so, like.

But, like, that's, you know, that's me.

I wanted to say, okay, how can we get together and move forward together?

And that sort of togetherness leads me to sort of.

When I was a kid, my parents version of success, it wasn't the straight A's.

They loved that.

It wasn't the, like, she's so pleasant.

She's so lovely to have in class.

My parents believed that making opportunities for other people to eat was the most important thing.

And so success to them is not me getting to the top of the mountain or getting into the room.

It's how many people did you bring in with you and who did you teach?

Right.

What did you pass on?

And so for me, that leads me to.

I run two packaging companies, one called Kate Craig Creative, and one called Electric Postcard Entertainment, where I take my own IP stories that I know are really good that came out of my school library with my kids and my students, and I give them to other writers and I teach them how to write the book and about the publishing business and lead them and create opportunities for them to get publishing deals and to start their publishing pipeline.

Right.

And shorten that Runway.

Because it took me so long to break in that I knew that it would take so much longer to change the shelves if I wasn't able to create a Runway for other people to get there faster.

And because I've read so much, I'm sort of a proliferator of stories.

I have a lot of stories.

It's sort of like a chronic problem that I have.

I'll walk through D.C.

or New York or whatever.

I'll be like, oh, that can make for a good story, or reading the newspaper or whatever.

It, like, won't turn off and I can't write all the books.

And so I thought the only way to change the shelves is to help other people.

And sometimes that means, you know, teaching people how to fish and teaching them what you know and giving them something of yourself and giving them an opportunity to make money so that then they can create longevity for themselves.

And have.

And be a mentor to a lot more people.

And so I learned about this, this model of publishing from reading the Babysitters Club and Pretty Little Liars and Vampires.

They're all books that are written by a bunch of people under a pen name.

And I thought if white writers were doing this, and this was like an age old sort of secret in children's publishing, that I could make opportunities for black people and for marginalized people to be able to do work like this, to pay the bills, to get their start, to help with that sort of literacy bridge that they're building and to break in, because it really is a brick, sometimes concrete wall for our stories.

And now I have over 50 books on the shelves, which is really exciting.

And so many authors that I've been able to launch like Kwame and Balia and the Tristan Strong series.

And now Kwame has his own, his own imprint, Freedom Fire at Disney.

I mean that if I'm going to.

When I help you, you help others.

Like, we got to keep the flame going.

And so I'm just so proud of him.

And so there's so many Nick Brooks with Promise Boys.

I've got, there's tons, Love Radio and Ebony Liddell.

So, like, amazing authors that, you know, that worked with me and now have gone on to do amazing things.

And I love them deeply and the work that they're doing.

And I just am so excited that I get to be part of their journey.

And.

Yeah.

And it all came out of being told I couldn't do something.

So now I'm trying to do it all and I'm tired but happy.

You do not.

I mean, I'm as a bookseller, right, like, you know, in my mind, the thing I wanted to do more than anything was to sell books.

Yes.

You know, me and my wife, we own a bookstore.

But the thing I love to do is go into the bookstore and actually recommend a book to somebody for them to come in and pose a challenge of, I don't know, I don't know what I want to read.

Like, they just, it's a blank slate.

And I have to figure out from that nothing, how to get them into something that they absolutely love.

And I, I love that challenge because when they come back and it just happened this past weekend, Brother walked in.

He was like, I was on the computer working, working, working.

He caught my eye, said, I'm back.

And it was mystery thriller that I recommended to him that he hadn't even considered reading before he got through the first book.

And I think A week and a half later, he's back for book number two.

And I absolutely love it.

And what you're doing is, like I said, you're changing the bookshelves, you're creating, helping to create all these different stories that I myself as a bookseller can get people into.

They don't feel limited in the stories that they can explore.

And that is the most important aspect of helping a community like lift off this lid that you talked about.

That the history that's being hidden, like all this stuff that's been hidden and it requires books on the shelves, requires.

Stories to be told and a variety of them.

The mystery singers, the magic, the sci fi, you know, the historical fiction, the hard hitting crime novel.

Like we deserve to have a plethora of opportunities to read lots of different kinds of things.

And so that's what I like to create and it's what I wanted as a young person is to have the ability to be able to read about myself and my family and people who look like my family and friends in all these different settings.

So I just feel grateful that I get to do this job.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

So fantastic.

This has been incredible.

I've really enjoyed this conversation.

We're going to start to wrap it up, so I want to talk.

Just do a quick wrap up of the books you highlighted.

So we have Virginia Hamilton.

Yes, all of her works.

All of her works.

We have Zora Neil Hurston, Langston Hughes.

Zora Hurston.

All of her works.

All of her works.

All of her works, Langston Hughes and specifically the Ways of White Folk.

Yes.

I love all of his work.

But that one I think was a big catalyst for me.

I was like, wow, this is okay.

Like, okay, this gives me things to think about.

So where do you go after that?

What was the next one?

Nella Larson's passing was a huge, huge catalyst for me as well, where I was like, wow, this is, you know, I couldn't stop reading it.

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I haven't read that.

You haven't read it?

Okay, okay, I won't say anything about it.

Okay.

No, no, I'm gonna make that a book club pick so I can make sure I get to it in the next few months.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's controversial and interesting and has a very interesting open ended ending.

And then I would say from there it became Jacqueline Woodson and Andrew Davis Pinckney and Rita Williams Garcia, all of their work.

And then I talked about all of, like, the amazing authors that are here now that I'm jealous that I didn't get to read when I was 10 years, 10, 11, 12, and 13, like Tracy Dion and Roseanne Brown and Jordan Ifueko, L.L.

mcKinney and Bethany C.

Morrow and Jason Reynolds, Lamar Giles, you know, you know, Renee Watson, all the people, they're doing.

All doing incredible things.

So I'm going, let's.

What I want to do is.

And you've answered this throughout this entire episode, but I want you to answer the question, why do black books matter to you?

Oh, why do black books matter to me?

I would say black books matter to me because they are the marrow of my imagination.

They are the thing that keeps me creating.

They are the things that made me create.

They made who I am.

They grew my imagination.

I couldn't do what I do without that, just like I couldn't exist without the marrow inside of my bones.

And I would say they are the things that will continue to make me excited about being a writer and about being.

About concepting books and staying in publishing, even when it's really hard, is returning to the root, returning to the marrow which are the black books.

There have always been the anchor and the lighthouses for me.

Fantastic.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

And that is our show.

Thank you.

Danielle Clayton.

Thank you.

Thank you for the work.

Sound effects going on here.

I know, but thank you for the work that you and your wonderful, beautiful wife do every day, in and out.

It's thankless work.

You center us and you love us and you put our books into the hands of readers so that then we can continue to write other books.

So thank you for your passion, your dedication, and for seeing us and seeing what we're doing and trying to do.

So we love you.

Not a problem.

You feed me.

And this is.

This is.

I just want to kind of return a favor.

This is pay it forward like you're doing for others.

That's what I want to do.

So.

Man, this is awesome.

Hey, guys.

Danielle Clayton.

Remember to please check out the show notes for a full list of the books you discussed today.

Of course, if you're interested, you can pick up these and other titles from our show sponsor, Mahogany Books.

You can head online at to mahoganybooks.com or stock at any of our two stores in the D.C.

area.

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Hey y'all.

Peace.

Black books matter.

Take care.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I don't know why that happens.