The African American readers were just over the moon. Some of the stories they told me of going in the bookstore and seeing night song and you know the first

thing they did was run to the you know flip to the back to make sure it was written by a black woman and one woman said she sat in the

bookstore right there on the floor and started reading.

That was the voice of Beverly Jenkins. We are thrilled to have Beverly with us. We've been working

on getting her to join us on Fated Meats since season one and pandemics and busyness got in the way but we're finally here and it

feels right that the first time we talked to Beverly we're talking to her as

part of the Trail Blazers series. You will hear her talk about her life, her time beginning writing,

her work, her research, publication, her editors, and her readers.

And we think you'll love it.

Welcome to Fated mates.

We are so thrilled to have Beverly Jenkins with us today. Welcome Beverly.

Thank you, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. This is, you know, we've been trying to hook up for a while, so thanks so much for the invite.

We really have and we, I mean obviously for many, many reasons Jen and I have been wanting you to come on

fate of mates to talk about all sorts of things.

But I don't know if you remember this, but you and I were together outside of the National Book

Festival, what feels like a thousand years ago when we could be with each other.

And you started telling me stories about the beginning of your career and the early days and it was one of the most

magnificent afternoons of my life and so I am basically just here to make you tell those stories on tape.

Well I got a million of them so you'll have to let me know which one did you want to hear. No I want to hear them all. Yeah. So we are the the concede of the whole this whole the work that we're doing right now with our Trailblazer guests is to really get the

voices of the genre and the voices of the people who built the house on tape and to also say the names of the people who maybe we have

not heard of the not Beverly Jenkins is so that's why we're doing this.

That's why we think it's important,

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