[This interview was conducted online and there may be some audio variation.]

Newly anointed MacArthur Fellow and best-selling, award-winning author Jason Reynolds returns to the MiP podcast for the 10th anniversary year! His new book, Twenty-Four Seconds From Now, joins the compendium of many of Jason’s love stories for and featuring young people. Jason speaks to the transparency of larger conversations around intimacy–what it means, feels like, and actually looks like outside of “mainstream” representation–the multidudes of love in relationships and storytelling, as well as a very necessary need for more discourse around the emotions that come with Black male’s sexual experiences. Particularly the need for more tenderness.

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This month’s episode & newsletter were sponsored by Writeability, a nonprofit writers guild, in defense of the imagination.

Intro/Outro music is by Moutaineer and licensed through Premuim Beat.