How Glory Edim (Well-Read Black Girl) Gives Space
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Glory Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl, joins us today for a special episode! In 2015, she founded the Brooklyn-based book club and online community. Two years later, a literary festival emerged. This month, she launched Well-Read Black Girl with Glory Edim by Pushkin Industries.
We begin with Glory’s daily morning journal (3:30), the mission behind her new podcast (4:28) and the “literary kickback” she hopes it becomes (5:35). As the debate over Critical Race Theory continues (7:24), she reflects on the importance of “offering space” to writers of color (10:24) and how her work has been shaped by authors like Audre Lorde (13:00), Maya Angelou (14:00), and bell hooks (15:00).
On the back-half, Glory shares memories from a childhood of “mothering herself” (18:26), the archive she created of her father before his passing (21:19), and how Well-Read Black Girl transformed her pain into something bigger than herself (27:00). Before we go, we turn to a poem from Honey, I Love by Eloise Greenfield (31:39), a formative senior yearbook quote (36:34), and where Glory hopes to go in the years ahead (37:30).
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. This talk easy. |
| 0:14.0 | easy. I'm San forgo so welcome by the founder of Well Red Black Girl, Glory Edum. |
| 0:48.2 | For the uninitiated, Well Red Black Girl is a Brooklyn-based book club and online community that champions the work of black |
| 0:55.3 | authors. It was founded in 2015. In 2017, Glory launched a literary festival featuring appearances from Gabriel Union to |
| 1:05.0 | Michelle Obama. Then in 2018 came her first anthology, |
| 1:09.8 | well-read Black Girl finding our stories, discovering ourselves, which was published by Random House. |
| 1:17.2 | At each turn, Clory has found a way to expand the vision and reach of Well-Red Girl. Now after years of hosting conversations |
| 1:26.1 | at their festival and on their Instagram page, Glory has launched a new podcast called |
| 1:32.0 | Well Red Black Girl with Glory Edom. |
| 1:35.0 | Each week, glory aims to bring readers and writers together by sitting with some of the best |
| 1:40.3 | authors we have today. |
| 1:42.3 | Her first three episodes are with Mingen-Lee, |
| 1:44.8 | Toronto Burke, and Anita Hill. If you'd like to take a listen, you can find |
| 1:49.0 | well-read Black Girl with Glory Edam on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you do your podcasting. |
| 1:57.0 | Now, in the conversation you're about to hear, I wanted to sit with Glory to unpack the mission statement of her new show the enduring influence |
| 2:05.5 | of her parents both of whom survived Nigeria's by Afro war and the timeliness of the |
| 2:11.0 | work she's doing today especially in the wake of book banning |
| 2:14.6 | inside classrooms and the polarizing conversations around critical race theory. |
| 2:20.8 | Speaking of, we'll be having a larger conversation about erasure, whiteness, and black history with Dr. James |
| 2:27.8 | Whitfield this coming Sunday, the 20th. |
| 2:31.0 | Whitfield was a principal at a Texas high school, actually the first black principal in the school's history, |
| 2:37.5 | who was then fired after being accused of implementing critical race theory into the school's curriculum. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Higher Ground, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Higher Ground and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.