I had interacted with Ms. Morrison both formerly and informally at this point for, you know,

more than 10 years. And it gets to the point where we've talked so much about this book,

and she's very close friends with the person who's my mentor, Eleanor Trailer. And so I go to Dr. Tees for

this New Year's open house that she usually has like from 10 in the morning until like 10 the next morning.

And she says, you know, she sends me upstairs for something that she knows that Morrison's up there.

So she's also like going to surprise me and I go, oh, gee whiz.

So now I'm at the position where I'm actually trying to

dodge Tony Morrison. And that's the beauty of my life at this point, that I am trying to

avoid a writer that I'm working on because I've not made as much progress as I want it to make.

Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them.

I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today I am joined by Dana A. Williams.

Dana is a professor of African-American literature at Howard and the author of the brand new book, Tony at Random,

the iconic writer's legendary editorship, which chronicles Tony Morrison's time as an editor at Random House and her

long-lasting impact on publishing. Today, Dana and I discuss Tony Morrison as a writer and

an editor. We also talk about why Dana chose God Help the Child as our July book club pick,

and we get into some of the black

classics that are a little bit less well known that Dana thinks you and I should read.

Quick reminder, everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in

the show notes. And if you love this podcast and you want inside access to it, you can head to

patreon.com slash the stacks

and join the stacks pack. And you can check out my newsletter at tracytomis.substack.com. By joining

either of those places, you're going to get yourself some exclusive content like bonus episodes,

...