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This episode features our conversation with self-help author, the Honorable Tiffany D. Tilley, which was live-streamed on October 14, 2025.

Tiffany D. Tilley is an author, leader, advocate, and luminary from Detroit with a multi-faceted background that often intersects across education, communications, government, real estate development, community and economic development, and nonprofit leadership. A dedicated public servant, she was elected to the Michigan State Board of Education in 2018 with nearly 1.8 million votes and later ran for Congress in Michigan’s 10th District.

Passionate about literacy, equity, Early Childhood Education, mental health, foster youth, and education reform. Tilley has been a tireless advocate both locally and nationally. She has fought for social justice, amplifying community voices and advancing grassroots initiatives that create meaningful change. As a State Board Member, she has worked to dismantle systemic barriers in education and beyond. Through her development and nonprofit leadership, she has secured approximately $20 million in resources for communities across Southeastern Michigan.

Tilley holds an MBA from the University of Detroit Mercy and has received global leadership training from C-Suite executives and government leaders in Italy, China, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Her greatest role is being a mother of two, inspiring change through leadership and service.

During our conversation, we chatted about Tiffany’s Know Thyself Book Series. Finding strength through reflection, purpose through healing, and power through authenticity, the Know Thyself Book Series includes four books: The Journey to Self-Empowerment, Virtues of Leadership, Getting Over the Hump: A Voyage to the Top, and Rebirth. This series is more than books, it’s a movement to inspire self-discovery, emotional resilience, self-determination, and positive transformation.

Purchase the Know Thyself book series: https://www.phoenixrisingpublishingcompany.com/know-thyself-book-
series/know-thyself-book-series

Find Tiffany on Instagram: @thriveandrisewithtiffany

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This episode features our conversation with Dr. Shonda Buchanan, which was live-streamed on September 14, 2025. We talked about her recent poetry collection, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone and her debut memoir, Black Indian.

Kalamazoo, Michigan native Dr. Shonda Buchanan is a three-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Oxfam Ambassador and a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and PEN America Mentor. An Associate Professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University and Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Shonda is the author of three collections of poetry, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, Who’s Afraid of Black Indians?, Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country as well as the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.”

Former Board President for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, and Board member of the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival and the Kalamazoo Arts Council, Shonda has published in The Mississippi Review, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, LA Times Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, Red Ink Journal, LA Parents Magazine and freelanced for the International Review of African American Art, Westways, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Daily Press and Sisters of AARP. Shonda’s forthcoming essay collection, Children of the Mixed Blood Trail, explores mixed-race migration in North America. An English Language Specialist with the Department of State, Shonda is currently shopping a Black Lives Matter book of poetry, America’s Bloodflowers: Poems, as well as Artificial Earth: Poems and Essays, about the first founding mixed-race “settlers” of Los Angeles and California Indians.

To learn more about Dr. Buchanan, please visit shondabuchanan.com.

Follow Shonda Buchanan on Instagram: @shondabuchanan

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This episode features our conversation with Shannon Luders-Manuel, which was live-streamed on September 7, 2025. We welcomed Shannon back to the virtual platform to talk about her debut memoir, The One Who Loves You.

Shannon Luders-Manuel is the author of the memoir, The One Who Loves You: A Memoir of Growing Up Biracial in a Black and White World, published by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press which was released in February of 2025. Shannon holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written extensively about race, with bylines in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. In 2015, she wrote the viral For Harriet essay “What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives.” Luders-Manuel presented her master’s thesis at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference in Chicago in 2012 and was a featured writer at the 2014 Mixed Remixed Festival in Los Angeles. She performs sensitivity reads for major publishers, providing feedback on Black and mixed-race characters and issues.

To learn more about Shannon, please visit shannonludersmanuel.com.

Purchase your copy of The One Who Loves You today via Black Writers Read's Bookshop link.

Check out the first time Shannon was on the virtual platform: Season One Episode Seven

Find Shannon on Instagram: @shannon_luders_manuel

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Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/

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