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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

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Black Writers Read has reached its sixth season! Check out this trailer to get a sneak peek of the upcoming season.

Conversations here on Black Writers Read question our own subjectivities as creatives, justify our choices as writers, acknowledge our growths, chiseling through barriers so that others behind us don’t face the same challenges and of course, remaining hopeful in our constantly shifting world - one that continues to erase our histories, representations, and identities. Black storytellers still stand strong for the culture.

Join us LIVE on Sunday, September 7 at 3 p.m. ET | 12 p.m. PT on the live broadcast on YouTube for our Season Six premiere.

Visit us online at https://blackwritersread.com/ to learn more about the virtual platform.

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Check out past episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music.

Thanks again for your support and for ensuring that Black writers continue to matter.

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This episode features our conversation with Arriel Vinson, which was live-streamed on May 24, 2025. We chatted about her debut young adult (YA) novel in verse, Under the Neon Lights (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, June 3. 2025).

Arriel Vinson is a Reese's Book Club LitUp Fellow and Midwesterner who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Kweli Journal, Catapult, The Rumpus, Waxwing, and others. Arriel is a Tin House YA Scholar, Highlights Foundation scholarship recipient, and 2020 Walter Grant recipient.

In this sparkling and heartfelt debut YA novel in verse, a young Black girl discovers first love, self-worth, and the power of a good skate. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Joya Goffney.

You can connect with her on social media at @arriwrites and find her work at arriwrites.com.

Purchase your copy of Under the Neon Lights via Black Writers Read's Bookshop link to support both the podcast and independent bookstores! CLICK HERE

Find Arriel on Instagram: @arriwrites

Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread

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

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