Hello, I am Lila Raptopoulos, and I'm in your feed with a special bonus episode.

So every September the Financial Times has their annual F.T. weekend festival in Kenwood House, which is this gorgeous estate in Hampstead Heath, which is a massive park in North London.

And because I live in New York, every year I miss it, and I see all these photos of FT readers and journalists,

and they're mingling together, and I imagine they're drinking PIMS cups, and they're asking big questions,

and they're putting the world to rights, and I can't go.

Of course, this year, they had to go virtual, which means they also got to go global, which means I got to attend, and it was excellent.

And not only did I get to attend, I also had the honor of hosting a conversation with one of my very favorite poets, Natasha Trethaway.

The conversation is about her recent memoir Memorial Drive, which is about her life and her relationship with her mother and her mother's

murder at the hands of her stepfather when Natasha was 19.

The writer Mary Carr described it as a riveting memoir that reads like a detective story

with the poise and clarity of Natasha's unforgettable poetry.

And I completely agree.

I started at thinking I would read a few chapters before bed,

and then I didn't stop until 4 in the morning.

That was when I hit the last page.

Yeah, and I just had chills.

For those who don't know her work yet, Natasha is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet,

and she's a former U.S. poet laureate.

Her father was white and her mother was black,

and she grew up in the deep south where their marriage really was a crime and an act of resistance.

And her family participated in civil disobedience on many levels throughout the civil rights movement.

So Natasha has experienced the depths of American racism.

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