>> Untia Bigelow: I'm so honored to be here with Tony Keith and Safia. Their books are absolutely amazing. "How The Boogeyman Became a Poet" was absolutely phenomenal. I read this book and it was life changing for me. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Aww. Sorry. [Laughing] Wasn’t ready for the affirmations so soon? Like, give us a minute. [Laughing] >> Untia Bigelow: So it literally took me in a point in my life where I had a family member who lived this experience, and even up until the time that he passed away, he was never able to be free of that stigma. So this book meant so much to me. Thank you for writing it. It's awesome. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Thank you, sister, thank you. [Applause] >> Untia Bigelow: And Safia with the "Bright Red Fruit". Again, it touched me on so many levels. So I grew up in a family that was very religious and Samara's story touched me on so many levels because I went through the same things that she went through. And this book just it just brought me to realize that sometimes even as young adults, we don't understand how much that we still have some of the hurt and pain that we go through in our childhood, and it follows us into adulthood. So let's just jump right into this conversation. Can you guys both tell me a little bit about yourselves and what inspired you to write these books? >> Tony Keith Jr.: I'm looking at you first. All right, I guess. Hi. My name is Safia. Hello. Um, what inspired me to write this book? Uh, originally it ended up being a very, very, very loose retelling, but I got it in my mind a couple years ago that I wanted to retell the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone, but with a young Sudanese American girl at the center of it. Um, so that was kind of the little kernel that became this. And obviously it like, exploded into a completely different thing once I actually sat down to write it. But I, you know, I grew up, really, really loving Greek mythology and loving like the scope and the scale of those stories. But that's not my people, you know? So I became really obsessed with the idea of, like, repopulating one of those stories with the people that I grew up with and, you know, the environment that I grew up in. And it was a really fun, formal exercise that also ended up being very cathartic in its own way. >> Untia Bigelow: Tony? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Uh, mine is not-- I don't think it's-- I think it's a little bit more simple. What had happened was-- it's a real story. I happened to be at a at a book event, artist event with one of my dear friends who's also an author. I won't mention their name because they might take up too much space in this room, but and this person has a lot of books, and we were talking about our lives, my life as a poet and his life as an author, and this idea of page versus stage. And there's a group of like, young people in schools anyway. Well, at one time my friend was doing a book signing, and it was a long line because this person has a lot of books and I had no books. And this was like February 2020. And in this line of people, uh, to go sign one of my friend's books came this little, little, little boy, little brown skinned boy. And and I'm assuming his mother, his aunt, some woman was with him, and he came right to me and he was like, hey, like Mr. Tony, where's your book or something like that? And I remember thinking to myself, like, I don't, I don't have a book like, what are you like, what book? Like what book? I think I said something like, I publish on the stage, like some silly response. And I go back to my hotel room that night because I had just finished writing my, my, my dissertation, my PhD, and I was like, maybe I'll write like a young adult version of my dissertation or something like that. But what wound up happening was it was clear to me that this little boy pulled a book out of me. There was sort of this what is your story, Tony, about? Like how you became to be a black gay poet and open like that story is kind of what wound up coming from that moment. The little boy pulled it right out of me. >> Yeah. Awesome. >> I know right? I called him Daquan. I don't know his real name, but in my head his name was Daquan. [Laughter] Child is Daquan. >> Untia Bigelow: So I was watching one of your interviews, Tony. You said in one of your interviews that you were writing poetry with no one, when no one was noticing, because you were writing it for yourself. Can you expound on that a little bit? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Absolutely. Shout out to mental health practices. I was a kid. In this book, you'll learn I was first in my family to go to college. I was also dealing with the fact that I'm pretty sure I was gay, although I was still figuring that stuff out as a kid. My father was on drugs, and there was just a kind of lot going on in my life as a little black boy from D.C.. And so what would happen is, yeah, literally at night or sometimes even during class when I'm in school. But I would just start writing poetry to myself to just, like, deal with my world. So, like instead of saying like, oh, I'm sad or I'm angry, I would just write these lines like, oh, I feel like my foot is about to fall through the, you know, a puddle in the desert or something. But like, it was always these rhymes or I don't know, that was that was just my way of knowing. And so to this day, to this day, y'all, in my notes app on my iPhone, I still got poems, right? I don't know, I still write poems to myself and I'm trying to figure my world out. And so the cool thing is in this book, because I got to sell this book is what you all will find in this book is I also included the handwritten copies of the poems that I wrote as a kid that nobody got a chance to see. And so shout out to the little poet Tony. But yeah. >> Untia Bigelow: Awesome, awesome. I love that. Safia, in one of your interviews, you said it was a pleasure, the pleasure of poetry for you is just the noises that the language makes. Can you expound on that a little bit? >> Safia Elhillo: Yeah, so my introduction to poetry was through spoken word and through slam. So for as long as I have been writing poetry, I've had a relationship to hearing my poems spoken out loud and a relationship to experiencing poems primarily in my body. So much so that when I'm editing a poem or just any piece of writing now I still have to read it out loud to myself because my ear can still catch stuff that my eye will be like, this is fine. Um, and so my experience of language as a writer is primarily sonic like. Yes, I'm writing it down. It's in a book or whatever, but I, the pleasure of it for me is putting two words together, a string of words together and realizing how good they sound together. Um, because I don't know that any words like, look good together on the page. It's fine. It's all text. But there is like just certain combinations of sounds, of words, of syllables just are really pleasurable sonically for me. And that pleasure is what I'm in pursuit of whenever I'm like stringing words together on the page. And I will more often than not prioritize that kind of sonic pleasure over like, making sense, you know? So even sometimes, like the sentence is a little, the information is not quite there, but it sounds good to me and I will prioritize that. >> Untia Bigelow: Question for both of you. When did you first know that you had fallen in love with poetry? >> Safia Elhillo: You go first. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Yeah. >> Safia Elhillo: You got me last time. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Yeah. I'm cheesing really hard because that is such a very honest statement. Like, there's a general, like, I love, I love, I'm literally in love with poetry. But for me, I share in this book how the first poem that I recall writing, I was in third grade. I went to Meghani Elementary School here in southeast D.C., anyway, and my teacher had asked me to write like a poem for class, like some essay, like a contest. And I wrote this poem called Seasons. And in the book, I talk about, it says, like all the leaves on the ground red, yellow, green and brown, something, I don't know the rest of the poem, but I'd been writing at least poetry in school since I was in third grade. But in this book, you'll see I was 13 years old when I wrote, like the first one that's included in here. So that was 30 years ago. But for me, the loving of the poetry came the clarity that I would get from writing it right. It wasn't to share it. It wasn't like this. Like, oh, I love this thing. I want to share it with other people. It was like, yo, I feel better when I write this poem. Like, I feel like I the thing that I'm wrestling with, the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the rage. You know, I feel better. So for me, it was that. But to your point, it wasn't until shout out to Love Jones that came out in 1996 or whatever it was, Larenz Tate and Nia Long and shout out to Slam, Saul Williams, but you know, and Russell Simmons HBO Def Poetry Slam, like once I started to see slam poetry and poetry, the performance of it all, that's when like so that early 2000 is when I just like lost it. I was like, oh, this is the jam. I need to be in this space. Yeah. >> Safia Elhillo: Um, I love that. So my, my maternal grandfather was a poet. So it was always in my life. There wasn't like a moment where I directly recall like a before and after. It just was always around. But he wrote exclusively in, like, very heightened classical Arabic, where I, like, understood every fourth word of what he was talking about. Um, but what kind of gave me a sense of my own relationship to it was I had just started writing poetry for myself and it was fine. You know, there wasn't like a huge, big revelation where I was like, this is my calling. I was like, here's one hobby in a string of 10,000 hobbies that I'd had as a kid at that point. And then a friend of mine took me to the Tuesday night open mic at Busboys and Poets, where we were just talking about how Derek Watson-brown used to work the door there, and because it was on a school night and I was a young teenager, my mom was like, you're going to what, on a Tuesday night? And I was like a poetry open mic. And she was like, okay, you could go, but we're all coming with you. So my entire family, which was at that point, there was always relatives coming in and out of the house. So there would be like 10 or 15 of us pulling up late to the open mic, trying to get in. And Derek would be like, like you have to come earlier, you're going to bring this many people. Um, and once I started going to those open mics and seeing the community that formed around poetry there, I just really, that is the thing that made me want to be a poet. I was not particularly good at writing poetry for a while, but I wanted to keep being invited back into those spaces and to belong to those people. And so I was like, I'm going to keep showing up with my entire family until you all start to claim me. So, um, for-- Yeah, for years at a time, that was just my weekday. So it was one of the few things I was allowed to do outside the house on a school night. >> Untia Bigelow: Awesome. So, Tony, in your book, you talk about the boogeyman. How did you develop the world of the boogeyman and the metaphor of him in your memoir? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh, your questions are so good. So the title is How the Boogeyman Became a Poet. The truth is, y'all, I wrote a poem back in 2010 or 2011. A friend of mine called me. I was having a bad day and just, you know, just needed, like, a pep talk. And I'm trying to cheer him up on the phone like, nah, man. Like, you're a good dude. Like, everything will work out for you. All this positive energy and I hang up the phone and just like I did as a kid, as I still do, whenever I have a lot of emotion, I write and I still do this. And so I wrote this poem that wound up being the epilogue in the back of this book, by the way, and the last line of that poem it says, and so the boogeyman became a poet, and I don't know about you, but like, again, everything I write is for myself first. And so when I wrote that poem, that last line stayed in that poem and I kept it there. I don't know why. And I will perform that poem in different places, but I kept it there. So it wasn't until I started writing this book when I realized, like, oh, there's this line at the end of this poem that says, and so the boogeyman became a poet. And so the question became, how did the boogeyman become a poet? And I'm an academic. I have a PhD. It's the truth. And so I love research questions. And so I wound up writing this book as if it were an essay, and it was like, yo, how did I become so unafraid of being who I am? And so the title of the book came from a poem that I wrote decades ago. I mean, that still matters to me now. And so that's how that showed up. And so it does show up. It's a metaphor, y'all. The boogeyman is not an actual person. You'll discover this. There's not some creature trying to, like, haunt me, but there is a metaphor built in there. So that's where it came from. It came from a poem. >> Untia Bigelow: Awesome. So we know that words have power. They have power to change narratives. They have power to cause people to hate, to love, to bring about passion. So when you were writing these, the memoir and your novel, how did these words influence how you wanted your reader to understand what you were writing in your books? >> Safia Elhillo: So with this, this book, not as much as my other books, but I often include a pretty decent amount of untranslated Arabic in my books. And with this, it's not directly in the language, but a lot of the references are very specific. And if you know, you know, and, because when I was a young reader, I loved reading. I would read everything I could get my hands on, but it never felt like anything was directly addressed to me. I always felt like I was eavesdropping on other people's business. And so I wanted because of that, I think I like trust that a reader who is not directly the demographic that I'm directly talking to will like, be willing to do that kind of eavesdropping work that I did my whole life. But I wanted for like a young Sudanese American reader that like serotonin hit of being like, oh, this is exactly. I know exactly what you're talking about. I like I have been to these places. I have those aunties. I know exactly what's going on here. Um, so a lot of the references are not explained in any way. I just was like, if you if you get it, surprise. If you don't, there's hopefully enough going on around it that you can just skip over this little section and still get a sense of what's going on. Um, but a lot of the images come from that where I wanted to write a very specific world, based on my very specific memories of a world inside the world. I grew up in a very Sudanese enclave here in DC. Um, so much so that, like for a lot of my life, I didn't know very many people who were not Sudanese, even though we lived in this country. So I wanted to give that, like, very specific texture of a world that I know for a fact exists, but that I don't really see often in books. Um, and so even the ways, like the language that I associate with those spaces is especially for the, the kids that I grew up with. Um, we all kind of spoke this hybrid English Arabic language to each other where it was so fluent, because the word comes out in whatever language it occurs to you. So you don't have to take that beat to make sure, like, am I speaking English right now? Am I speaking Arabic right now? And I wanted characters that spoke that way as like a little treat for those communities that I grew up with. >> Untia Bigelow: Awesome. >> Tony Keith Jr.: I love that. Yeah. Because there's so much to be said about language and accessibility and even the translator I was chatting with Solo. That's your name? Gotta love solo. Um, about how, you know, I write in African American Vernacular English. My first language is African American Vernacular English. I speak black all the time, and I try not to, if often like code switch. Right. Quite a bit. And so in this book I was thinking about that too, like, yo, I want to. I would love if I were a kid to read a book that just had like a little bit of something that sounded like me. So every this might be, not every this, but like some this became this and some that became dad and, you know, mouth became mouth. And it's sort of like, yo, that's just that's just how I speak. This is natural. This is a part of my linguistic reality. But it's also probably how my book wound up being written in verse. Right? It was something about accessibility, especially for younger readers, y'all. I just turned 43 not too long ago. I know I look great. [Laughing] Thank you very much, but I didn't start reading until I was in my mid-30s. That's the truth. Like I picked up, another one of my-- The same friend who has a lot of books. I wrote this really, really great book called When I Was the Greatest. And I remember reading that thing like, oh, this sounds like something that I could write. When I write that. But, I mean, it sounds like this voice, this, this, I can write to young people. I can write to readers that look black and brown. Like, this is a thing that I can do. And so it awakened a possibility. And so I started reading all this young adult literature. I got obsessed with Mahogany Brown and Elizabeth Acevedo and Candice Elo and Jacqueline Woodson, Dean Atta and Amber McBryde. Like reading all of these, and Safia Elhillo, all these authors who were writing in verse and I was like, oh, I get it. This is this is the connection. So for me, it was about translation and accessibility to younger readers, particularly black and brown ones who did not have a love for books growing up, you know. >> Untia Bigelow: Awesome. So during your writing process, your creative process, did you ever face any challenges when writing these stories? >> Safia Elhillo: Um, yes. >> Tony Keith Jr.: I wish you would say no. >> Safia Elhillo: Right? Not at all. Well. Like, early drafts of this book were a lot more directly autobiographical than the finished product. And so at first I was like, I'm just going to write it and we'll figure it out after that, and after the first draft, I was like, oh, this is my actual business. [Laughing] I don't know. And I think when I with earlier projects, I, um, in order to get the thing finished, I'd be like, just pretend no one's going to read it, just write it. And then I would be out in the world on book tours or whatever, and we'd start reading and I'd be like, oh no, this is my real business. And I'm trying to have a better boundary, I guess. And so it was, first of all, difficult to like, spend time in an age and a part of my life that I don't really psychologically spend a lot of time in anymore. And remembering the things that hurt or were frustrating and trying to dredge up those memories because, you know, at first I was like, oh, it wasn't so long ago that I was 16, but that was half my life ago. And a lot of that stuff I haven't thought about. So it's also a new and difficult feeling to be like, oh, I actually just don't remember. Like, this is something that was so vivid and played such a leading role in so much of my life, and now I just legit don't remember. So having to do that excavation and then having to make stuff up into the spaces where my memory failed me was very difficult and very humbling. And then with certain things having to be like, okay, this actually this makes for a good juicy story. And also I have to prioritize protecting myself. And so I have to take this out or I have to prioritize protecting my family or my community. So I had to take this out and that was a real, yeah, I don't know, it felt like a real test in those moments to be like, I could just, like, sell my soul a little bit and give it all to the book. But I need to be able to, like, show my face in my community again. So, unfortunately, as juicy as this is, this is for the dinner table, only it's not going in the book. So it took a kind of discipline that I don't think of myself as having necessarily, um, to have to, like, step outside the book and be like, yes, this is good for like Art. But I also, like, am a person in the world who is accountable to people in the world. And so I can't really like, sacrifice it all in the name of art. There's some stuff that I have to like pull back on a little bit. Let's see. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Yeah. Like literally exactly what you said. I'm like, yeah, you got to protect yourself, but also be vulnerable to also think about the people who you are writing about. And for me, it's a memoir. And so these are characters who are real people in my life. A lot of them in the book have pseudonyms. You all should know that I tell the story about a playground bully who I just randomly named Tehran, y'all. This person's name is not Tehran. My family read this book and they've been looking for Tehran. [Laughter] They want to fight him so bad. Um, but you know something about-- So there's a vulnerability in that and protecting the people. And I write about my father being addicted to drugs and trying to take care of the people I write about. But for me, so in addition to that, I'm thinking about another way to answer this question is for me, some of the difficult parts was writing through the emotion, right? So I tell a story in this book about one of my dear friends. His name is Gary Hopkins Jr., was shot and killed by Prince George's County Police in 1999. So this ain't new story. And I had to write about that story because Gary literally woke me up at 3:00 in the morning. I was writing his book 3:00 in the morning. I remember waking up and I could hear his voice in my head. I don't know where it came from. And I started crying. This is the truth. And I ran downstairs into my house and I have a little office, a writing area, and I wrote, I think, for like an hour straight, like in tears, like literally crying because I could actually hear my friend's voice, like, as I'm writing. So there was sort of this dealing with the emotion. Like I had no idea that I was still carrying that trauma around from 1999. Right. But it was living there and so like having a right. So for me it was Tony, you got to write about your mom, you got to write about, you got to write, like you got to get free too. So the difficult part was like me also getting free from a lot of that stuff. But yeah. Shout out to Gary Hopkins Jr., bless his name. >> Untia Bigelow: Awesome. So there's a passage in your book, Tony, that was just very prolific for me. And could you read it for me? It's on page 204. It won't let me sleep and read, 205 as well. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh, let me provide some context. Oh, okay. Um, so this part of the book smack dab almost in the middle. Um, I just had prom night. I have a girlfriend in this story. Oh, there's such a story about my girlfriend. Also, if you read the character Blue, when you read about the character blue in this story, you also know that blue also did this cover art. So there's a wonderful story about that. But Blue in this book is my girlfriend. And so we had prom night and, well, things didn't go the way that traditional prom nights would go. And in this book, it refers to the boogeyman, is the metaphor the word that I use to describe the boogeyman. The title says, It won't let me sleep. "My covers aren't heavy enough to hold me as tight as I need them to. And ain't nothing but dust collecting on my pillow every time I blink. Thinking about how much I want to be with blue. But not in the getting busy way. Not in the let's pay for an expensive wedding and have kids way. I want all the fairy tale and fantasy of love, but without all the boogeyman's bullshit. And all that praying to Jesus is teaching me that there is some form of freedom found in my poems. Somehow those metaphors wrap themselves around my skin, making it easier for me to walk through the world in camouflage, pretending my girlfriends are girlfriends. I can hide, become invisible, and disappear in them. I arm myself with everything I got and it takes two poems to write the boogeyman away for now." And then there's a poem that I wrote. The actual poem is here. It's untitled, but it goes like this. And give a little poet Tony some grace. "Constant smiles wear my face Mixed emotions keep my heart paced Undying thoughts of those undying memories Feeling immortal, living on for centuries Butterflies fly rings inside Feelings of hate and guilt have often died To be loved gives you great feelings Kills all bad emotions, and brings about believing To be loved is to answer questions not yet asked Feeling the future and remembering the past Not forgetting that beautiful face passing through my head at an untimely pace Needing the attention and greedy for affection To be loved is a feeling far expressed To be loved would be to hate less." Shout out to little poet Tony. >> Yes. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Untia Bigelow: So, Tony, as you were reading that, what emotions did you feel at. >> Tony Keith Jr.: All the things so, So I'm gonna do two things at once, because I would be-- I would not be. So I got a two book deal with Harpercollins, and y'all should know something. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Um, the poems that are in boogeyman are-- Here's where they came from. And this is why I want you to have this reaction. So what had happened was there's always a story with me, y'all. February 2019, this is before I knew I was going to write a book. I was laid off from my full time nonprofit job doing youth development work in DC, and I was just about finishing my dissertation. So I was enrolled in a PhD program, and my husband was also laid off. It was a tough time, and the only way that I knew how to survive was on the poems and the writing and the performing and the gigging, and I was also enrolled in therapy. Shout out to therapy. My therapist. Shout out to Walston. I was in Talkspace, so, you know, you can type, see a therapist and I'm going through all kind of stuff and I'm typing and I'm texting. I'm cussing him out, cussing him out like he's the problem. And and what he wound up saying was like, Tony, sounds like you have a lot of repressed anger, a lot of repressed sadness, a lot of repressed confusion. It seems like this is repressed stuff that you are projecting onto the people that you love. In particular, my husband. I love that fine little tiny man. But I was giving him the blues and I didn't know why. And so I wanted to enroll in therapy. And he was like, Tony, you know, you told me that you're a poet. And I was like, yeah, I've always been-- I've been a poet my whole life. I've been writing poems since I was a kid. I got this box of poems I've had since I was a teenager. He was like, you have a box of poems that you've had since you were a kid. Where are they? And I was like, oh, they're in the closet where I keep them. He's like, you keep a box of poems that you wrote as a kid. And I think a lot of people do this. We're archivists, diaries, journals. Right. He goes, well, maybe you should go open up that box and maybe you might discover something. And so, y'all, I spent a weekend, another moment of me crying. I'm always crying. And I read, I think, I think over 100 pieces, like poems, like on cash register, receipt tapes, toilet paper tissue, like anything that I could find. And there was a stack like this. One of them, I burned one of them like I cried. But it was this spiritual moment of like, yo, this poem doesn't serve me anymore. This one did. And I began to like. And so what wound up being left over was a series of poems that wound up in this book. And so your question when I hear myself read that poem, I remember where I was emotionally in my life when I needed that poem. And so the same thing is true for the second book, knucklehead. Every poem in here, it's two black men and boys, and the gay ones especially. And the people who love us. So if you love me, you love this book too. But in here are also poems that I continue to write to myself about just dealing with my world. Because that's the only way I know how to cope, you know? And so to hear that, I was like, oh man, I remember being in that space thinking about that and what that poem does, you know. And so that's the long answer. Sorry. I take up a lot of time. >> Safia Elhillo: Wait, when is Knucklehead out? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh, Knucklehead is out February 25th, 2025. [Applause] Early plugs. >> Untia Bigelow: So, Safia, in your book, Samara had just found out that Horace had stole her poetry. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh, yeah. >> Untia Bigelow: And she had kind of confronted him about it, and he was like, your mom doesn't know about this, doesn't know about that. And at that moment, she was afraid to use her support systems, which we know a lot of young adults are afraid to use their support systems. Of course, when family doesn't support them in the things that they're trying to put forth. So there is a passage here when Samara gets the courage to actually approach her mother and tell her, and her mother actually sees the damage that she did by making Samara fear her. Can you read that passage for me? >> Safia Elhillo: Yes. And I know it had a bookmark. Okay. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Right where fruit is so good. Y'all got it. >> Safia Elhillo: Thank you. "For a long time, they are silent. Mama's eyes, downcast eyes. Mama's downcast eyes intent on her twisting hands. Aunt Ida watching her, waiting for her to speak first. Sameera, Mama begins. Her voice catching, her eyes rising to meet mine. She is not angry, is not wailing and slapping her face like she did in the past when she learned of my wrongdoing, alleged and otherwise. Her voice is very quiet, her eyes completely dry and still I can see she is in pain. Enormous pain. Her voice cracked and dry as ruined earth. Sameera, I'm so sorry I made you feel like you couldn't come to me. I'm sorry I was so busy trying to govern you. To protect you only from the dangers I could imagine for making you feel like you couldn't come to me for help. I never meant to make you afraid of me. I'm so sorry he used your fear of me to trap you, to steal from you. He is at fault here. But so am I. I want to make you a promise. Need to make you a promise that you can always come to me. I don't care what it is. I promise. Any time you need me, you can come to me for anything. And that I am always on your side. Whatever happens. The last thing I wanted was to be someone you needed to hide from. Someone you no longer knew how to need. And I need you to, Sameera. We are in this together. Equal footing. No more secrets born of fear. You will have me forever. Whatever you need, I will always come get you. I will always choose you first. She and Ida rise from the stairs in one fluid motion, like a single animal, and surround me with their embrace. And I am back inside my family inside their love. Inside my enormous belonging." >> Tony Keith Jr.: Gosh. [Applause] >> Untia Bigelow: That passage was so deep to me because a lot of times as parents, we don't listen to our children. We don't support them because we're so stuck in traditionalism and thinking what society says culturalism that we forget that our children are human beings too. And at that moment, that vulnerable moment that her mother saw that hey, had I just realized that my child was a human being too, and that she needed me and she couldn't come to me because she was afraid that just-- that did something to me because I have children. So, you know that passage was amazing. So growing up, were you able to speak freely with your parents? >> Safia Elhillo: No. [Laughter] I remember, and this wasn't just me, all of my friends. There was nothing in the world I was more afraid of than my mother. Not like men on the metro. Strangers on the internet. None of those were as terrifying to me as my mother. So what like, and so often, you know. It was such a common story in the communities I grew up in where I would see girls in particular be in, like, real deep need to call an adult trouble and would not because the fear of like getting in trouble by your parents somehow superseded the fear of like whatever actual danger we were being faced with. And that fear still lives in my body. Like, it turns out my mom was cool. Or maybe she, like, got chiller with age. It's hard to say. But it, like, never once occurred to me as a young person that I could call for help. And so I was always, like, scheming and maneuvering and like, you know, eventually, for the most part, figured it out. But it was exhausting to try and be resourceful in that way. When I legitimately did have a resource that it did not occur to me once to reach for it because I was like, why am I getting in trouble if I say that I was talking to a boy? So I would just, you know, figure out for myself, maybe sometimes ask my friends. But there was always a part of me that so badly craved just being able to, like, be a little kid and go curl up in my mom's lap and be like, please help me. But it seemed incredibly inaccessible. And so a little bit I was telling Sara earlier I was writing Auntie fan-fiction in this book a little bit, being like, what if the mom knew and helped? [Laughing] >> Untia Bigelow: What about you, Tony? >> Tony Keith Jr.: I don't even remember what the question was. What was it? What was it? >> Untia Bigelow: Were you able to speak-- >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh. Speak freely. Oh, yeah. Oh, good. I knew there was something about freedom. So the answer is yes. I'm really fortunate. I grew up in a family where I've always been loved. I've always been celebrated. People have always been excited for me. My mom is amazing. My dad, even though he was dealing with some mess, still does sometimes. It was amazing. So I definitely grew up in a family where I was always free to sort of very much be who I was, except with conditions, right? And so because of religion and my father, I didn't grow up in the house with my father, but very much the idea of like black church and rules around religion definitely like guarded how I felt about my sexuality. So I was afraid of not necessarily getting in trouble, but I was afraid of going to hell. That's the truth. I was afraid that if I died something bad, I was going to burn. I don't want to burn, especially for something that's not-- Anyway, it's in the book. But, um, there's that. Also in my actual, my physical safety, so I was always a short, scrawny kind of little kid. And because of that, people would bully me. And so I got into a lot of fights. And to be clear, I won a lot of them joints. To be clear. [Laughing] >> Tony Keith Jr.: Wasn't like I was out. It was like, no. Taking it, you know? But like I learned, I had to learn how to fight back. But I was always concerned about my physical safety and my spiritual safety. It was never like, could I say what I want to say? It was because my family was okay with that. The only thing that I would say, if anything there was a bit of a fear is because in this book I write about how I didn't tell any of my family members that I was, that I thought that I was gay or I was having these feelings or ideas. But I do write about how in this book, I had an uncle who died from complications of Aids in the mid or late 90s, and it later kind of came out that my uncle had all kinds of things going on that he never talked about. And I think so much about like how, gosh, if only I knew that I knew there was somebody close by that I could have talked to that probably, it might not have been so scary to have that conversation. And now it's funny because my family is like, you should have told us. We would have said something like, y'all ain't saying nothing when he was alive, you know? So would you expect me to do? And so yeah, for me it was physical safety and spiritual safety. >> Untia Bigelow: That's awesome. So what advice would you give young aspiring writers who are writing about their experience or they're just writing fiction in general? How would they go about the process. >> Safia Elhillo: You know, I can't speak to fiction in particular because I feel like I still-- >> Tony Keith Jr.: That's a different part of the brain. >> Safia Elhillo: As I go along, to be honest. Um, but I think with any kind of writing, um, so much of what I was taught as a writer was through the writers that I loved. And so I, like very early on, learned that my taste in other people's poetry, other people's writing, contained a lot of information for me about what my own aspirations were as a writer. Um, and so it was like, I feel like my whole process, journey, whatever as a writer is being like, what do I like in other people's writing? What are they doing? How can I learn to do that as well? And then just kind of collaging that together? And so, um, I always think that if I can't remember the last time I like, consumed another piece of writing by someone else, then I probably shouldn't be writing anything of my own if I like. Can't remember the last time I heard a poem. I'm probably not going to go write a poem. I should probably go read a poem first. And so, I don't know, I just feel like, as a rule for anyone, we should always be, like, taking in more than we put out. So I guess that would be my advice. >> Untia Bigelow: Okay, Tony? >> Tony Keith Jr.: That's just so-- Stop taking my answers and stuff. This is-- >> Safia Elhillo: We're synced up. >> Tony Keith Jr.: We are. Because I was over here, like, consumption and production always talk about this idea of, like, house plants. You got to water them and the water comes out. Anyway. So I'll change my answer. And I guess, um, I'm thinking about how it's okay young people to trust your own way of knowing. By that I mean like, yo, whatever voice. And I mean this in, like, a healthy kind of sense. And I'm going to be careful about how I say that. But like the voice that you hear in your head, that's yours, that can look like that on the page too, right? It is okay if it comes out in poetic rhyme. It's okay. I did not know that I was writing in verse until my literary agent told me, right? Like, my point is, like, you probably already have a thing that you're naturally doing. Schools may not recognize it, but like you might already be naturally writing in a way that's useful and comfortable and cool and free. Like continue doing that and consume other people who are. That feeds the thing that I think will help produce. But trust your own way of knowing. Don't worry about having to erase all the time. Like you're writing your voice. Your voice is literally the strongest thing that's going to wind up on that page. That's what readers need, right? >> Untia Bigelow: And how do you guys stay motivated to keep writing? >> Safia Elhillo: I don't know. I think usually by the end of the process of a book, it's been like so long since the whole thing started that I'm like, that's it. That's the end. Never again. And then a few months later, I'm like, you guys, should I write a book? And then I'm back on the ride. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Yeah, for me it's probably both. And there's an internal thing. There's because, again, I'm always going to be write poetry. I'm always going to be writing poetry. Right. That's that's always going to happen. But lately I find myself thinking about why. And I have been writing. I'm like to keep it to myself for a little while until I figure out what I'm gonna do with it. But, you know, people ask me questions now, that boogeyman they've read like, well, Tony, what happened with such and such? Well what happened? What's the next? And I'm like, uh. And so there's sort of this interesting like, well, maybe I might want to write something more. I don't know. So there's sort of this, like there's an internal I got it right, but then there's this external sort of like, Will you please write something for us, you know, kind of thing. And so for that. So there's that. And it's also I'm always reading, I am a constant consumer of books. I've become obsessed with books now and in particular books written by like Tommy Lee, like those big, thick, fat stupid-- Because what happens-- Yes, I can like, I can spend a Saturday, like just engulfed in them. And I think that there's a couple of things that are happening is I'm consuming the craft because I'm learning as someone who's not been a trained writer, I do not have an MFA. My PhD is in education. Right. Um, learning how to write dialogue, how to keep a reader engaged after the 2020, how to write a series of books. And so I find myself consuming for the sake of the craft and for the story, both. So yeah. >> Untia Bigelow: Okay. So that leads me to my next question. How do you engage with your readers and community? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh well, how do I gauge the readers? Okay, so two ways, probably more than two ways. One way is I would say I would engage with the readers in the actual writing. I hope, seriously, if you all decide to read "How the Boogeyman Became a Poet" book or listen to it, don't sleep, I self-recorded my audiobook. [Applause] So if you are someone who wants to consume the book in that regard, and it won an audio file award, so like an earphones award. So I got-- and so I would say so I engage readers through the writing. So I write because I want you to laugh and even be brought to the point of maybe tears and then cradled. But I engage you in the writing and there are all kinds of little nuggets. And I think the word in literature is published. They call it Easter eggs. There's all kind of little things that I planted in the books for people who might get it. So there's hip hop references, there's references to certain movie lines, there's like hidden metaphors. There are things that connect and "How the Boogeyman Became a Poet," that connect a "Knucklehead." So like, so for me, I engage the readers in the actual writing, but outside of that, find me on social media. I'm always out there doing something. [Laughing] >> Safia Elhillo: How do I engage with my community or with readers? I do a lot of in-person events. I feel like my friends joke that I've been on book tour since 2016. Whether or not there's a book. More often than not, I'm around, you know what I mean? And then with my community in particular, so I was talking about how I grew up in like a very insular Sudanese diaspora community here in D.C. And then I moved to New York, where there's a lot of Sudanese people as well. Um, and I moved to Oakland, where there's a lot of Sudanese people in the Bay, and I got to L.A. and I was like, where is everyone? And in the couple years that I've been there, um, I have a handful of Sudanese friends, but more often than not they tend to be transplants. But in these days, because I assume you all know at this point, but there's been a war in Sudan since April of last year, and it has been really bad and devastating. And a lot of us in L.A. have been trying to figure out how to mobilize community there for fundraising, but also how to spread information and stuff. Because one thing the news will do a lot about the war in Sudan is call it the forgotten war, which is obviously really cool and feels great. So in trying to gather the community there and find a venue to throw an event, we've been trying to be really intentional about engaging with the actual Sudanese community that has been there. Instead of being like, here we are, a bunch of transplants trying to like, stake our claim here. And so last weekend I went to Torrance, which is a suburb of L.A., with a group of my friends and just went to like a Sudanese diaspora community event where there were a bunch of like, elders and children and uncles grilling, and they told us to show up at one and the food wasn't served until five. [Laughing] And so that, um, was a really helpful reminder that those are like my home spaces and a reminder to, like, not just be a person that talks about those spaces to other people, but to, like, continue to actually go spend time in those spaces. And it's great. You know, all the aunties thought I was a teenager. They kept asking me whose daughter I was. I was like that, actually. Thank you so much. So I guess this is a long way of saying that my preferred way to engage is to show up. I am very bad at answering emails. I'm a horrible texter. I don't like talking on the phone. But one thing I will do is pull up. So that is my preferred way of engaging is just in person. >> Untia Bigelow: All right, last question I have for you. What are you working on now? And can you all give us a little sneak peek? >> Safia Elhillo: What am I working on now? Tony, you want to go first? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh, I would love to go first. So I got a second book coming in February. It's called "Knucklehead," and I don't know where y'all are from, but I'm from Virginia, from D.C. And so we're not just in D.C. where people say this, but where I'm from, you call little black boys little knuckleheads. It's not a bad thing. It's like little knuckleheads. So I read this poetry collection called Knuckleheads, and it's it's written over a series of letters. And so I'll maybe read just like maybe the first part of, like, one of the letters. Is that all right? Y'all want to hear? [Cheering] Also, y'all should know this book has illustrations, and the illustrations are so incredible, but there's a picture of, like, a young black boy with a planet sort of in his grasp. I've never done this out loud before. Here we go. "Dear knucklehead, have you ever had a planet lodged in your belly that could barely fit? Because there is not enough free space for it to expand into a land with enough soil, seeds, water, sunlight, wind, or sand to plant and produce vegetation for people as fresh as you, as cool as you is laid back as you can be while the world is spinning around counterclockwise, trying to birth itself into a language that breaks out of your body. But you don't even blink, do you? You don't burp either, because you know how blazing and catastrophic your breeze can be, especially when something in the wind is signaling that a storm is finna pull up and twist your atmosphere around into too many pieces. And you know that this will cause your roots to disconnect at the exact point where they are tangled together the tightest. And you know that your smoke and your haze and your hail is astronomically powerful. whenever you're calm, collectedness is shoved to the point of its mightiest. That's when your beautiful disaster will spread across the atmosphere, and your spirit will be unable to contain how wholesome you are, how complete, pulled together and upright you appear to a world afraid to recognize that the size of your body and the width, depth, girth, length and strength of your tongue ain't something God meant to threaten anyone. And so it is their fears and their eyes and their ears and their phobias and their biases and their slick slurs and their sneaky sneers that have become words that you and I are constantly translating into a poetic love speech that only we, us know how to fluidly speak. And it doesn't make any sense, knucklehead. Why our celestial stature and our divine light causes onlookers, bystanders, blabbermouths, naysayers, law enforcement officers, laypersons, and lawmakers to be afraid of what we might say or what we might do once we recognize that their problems with how we came out with the world in us, and how we want to show up as our full selves within it, and got nothing to do with us, me, we, you. And it doesn't help that no one is explaining all what's going on to us in a script that we can decode and interpret and fully comprehend. So we don't all call ourselves ambitious, inspirational, or courageous, although we know we're not blasphemous, ignorant or dangerous if anything knucklehead. Whatever force from whatever source that created the planet that can't fit inside of you is the same blast that brought about the one rotating inside of me too. So yeah, I know what it's like to bite your tongue and taste salt when letters armed as weapons are spoken to destroy you. I know that what you really want to say. Your arsenal, your defense mechanism, ain't as sweet or as soft or as delicate as you are for real, for real. I know you be holding back, too. Yes. [Applause] >> Tony Keith Jr.: Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. I've never done that before. Oh my God. [Laughing] Safia, what you got? >> Safia Elhillo: It's been a long time since I felt like I was writing something that wasn't for a book specifically. And so I've really been luxuriating in the feeling of just writing just little Lucy's little poems that aren't for anything, you know what I mean? And, like maybe emailing them to my friends, you know? But that's like the extent of their life right now, which just feels really nice and like a really nice return to just the pleasure of making something. And like, holding off before I decide what it's for. And then but I haven't been writing a whole lot of poetry in the past year and some change, because it's also very hard to-- it's been hard for me to, like, figure out exactly what my role as a poet is in this exact moment where, because my like, area of expertise as a poet is my autobiographical. I don't know that I find it particularly useful right now to be like, let me write and talk and publish extensively about my personal feelings, like it's, you know, um, and I'm more interested in doing work that feels useful and tangible right now. And so I weirdly have been writing a lot of prose, which is not something I like or I'm good at. I hate full sentences. But I, you know, if I think of the poem as a vehicle for sensation and sound and beauty and magic and mystery, I think of prose as being a vehicle for information, which is something historically I don't have a very robust relationship to like, facts. But, you know, there is this ongoing war in Sudan that has been, like incredibly devastating to like my people and my communities. And it's been really disorienting to feel like the world has ended and then go outside and like, you know, revolving doors keep revolving and trains keep running on time. And so I've been trying to take up space as much as I can with these facts and with these statistics and with these, like, eye watering numbers to be like, okay, if I can try to translate an existing readership's attention, interest, whatever in my like particular Sudanese American poems, how can I try to alchemize that into like interest and care in Sudanese people in general in the war in Sudan in particular and how can that care be translated into action? And so I don't know exactly, but it's an ongoing experiment right now, which I feel like I sleep better at night knowing that I tried that instead of being like, here's a poem about how I feel sad about the war that I am personally physically safe from right now. You know what I mean? Like, so I've been writing, like, primarily, um, on Substack these days, which feels kind of like a nice middle place between like first draft writing, but also publishing so that the information can be useful in some way. Um, so I'm mostly doing that, but it's, it's a very different kind of writing where it's I'm so used to like, yeah, like luxuriating in a poem, you know, and being like, wow, these words sound good together. And with this, it's so rarely wow, these words sound good together. And it's mostly just like these numbers are mathematically correct. So it's, you know, it's a very different muscle. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Yeah. For sure. >> Yeah. >> Tony Keith Jr.: I'm an academic. And so I know I do academic writing. So peer reviewed journal, 13 letter word things like it's a different flex. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Untia Bigelow: All right. So this next section, we have a couple of minutes for the audience to ask our authors. >> Tony Keith Jr.: Shout out to you by the way. You did such a great job. [Applause] >> Untia Bigelow: You'll find the microphones in the middle of your-- >> Tony Keith Jr.: What y'all want to know? What y'all want to know? What y'all want to know? >> You want to go first? Okay. >> Hi. Really loud. My question is for Safia. Um, you had mentioned earlier that your maternal grandfather wrote in a sort of high classical Arabic, and I had always grown up thinking that Arabic was reserved for this as this, like, holy language, only really to be used to, you know, be like, show deference for God or anything else. And I was wondering how from you specifically, like, you know, I read a lot about, like, translation and you do include, like, Arabic words in your writing. And I wonder, like, I've been wondering how you kind of made Arabic your own in this state, in this part of your life where you are actively publishing and you're thinking about your audience as much as you're thinking about your immediate community. So, yeah, like what? How have you kind of like taken Arabic in the midst of English? And how do you love both? You know what I mean? Like, how do you like-- Because I mean, you guys are all writers, like. And writing in America is so such a weird experience because you want to like, you love the English language. I mean, I do, you know what I mean? Like, I love the English language. Do I love the British Empire? No. [Laughing] So I was kind of wondering, like how you've kind of grown into that as you continue to write. >> Safia Elhillo: Yeah. so the Arabic that I grew up speaking is like a very Sudanese colloquial Arabic which makes it so that I can, like, communicate comfortably with Sudanese people. And that's about it, to be honest, you know. So all of the like, formalized kind of Arabic that people are taught in school. My formal Arabic language education stopped in the third grade. And so that's like eternally frozen at that age. And so and, you know, my grandfather's poetry in particular was in a very high register. You know, the equivalent in English would be like thee and thou and, which was not-- And, you know, he had access to many different kinds of Arabic. He was an Arabic teacher at some point, loved to correct my grammar. So but I knew pretty early on that the Arabic that he wrote in, the Arabic that like is in newspapers and on the news or whatever, is not an Arabic that I'm particularly fluent in. The Arabic that I'm particularly fluent in is like a domestic Arabic. And so I'm, I don't know, like a very polite niece in Arabic and like a delightful granddaughter type thing, you know. Um, but it's not-- I don't have a whole lot of tricks in Arabic. I can do, like, a couple of things, and it's mostly like, be polite or make, like, five jokes, you know? Um, and so for a long time, that made me think that I was not allowed to write in Arabic because I have access to many different Englishes that I can pick and choose from, depending on what best serves the thing I'm trying to do. And, I think I had to just accept that, like, I don't need an academic or heightened or archaic Arabic for it to be deserving of poetry. I can, just like, my friend Nate Marshall, the poet Nate Marshall once said in a workshop to us, welcome to how the hell I talk. And I think about that all the time whenever I'm writing. And so more and more, I'm trying to write in a way that gets as close as possible to how I actually talk and how the people around me actually talk. And that includes the Arabic as well. And it's not that I fell in love with Arabic that way, but I learned to celebrate it instead of keeping it be part of this, like secret, hidden part of my life that didn't show up in my poems. Now it's like it's in public, you know? >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Untia Bigelow: All right. We have time for one more question. >> Hi. This question is for both of you. Um, so I am a white female educator at a title one school in New York. And my question is, what advice would you have for me to implement your stories that reflect my student's experiences in a respectful and authentic way? >> Tony Keith Jr.: Oh, that's really good. The first thing I'll say is some of that work actually has already been done for you, so I'm really excited. Harpercollins, my publisher. They worked with a black queer librarian to create an educator's guide for "How the Boogeyman Became a Poet," Right? And that educator guide is available for free. You can download it directly from the Harper's website. You can Google it, but in there it includes activities, discussion questions. And so you should know it's framed by someone whose identity most likely reflects mine, probably as opposed to yours. And so like that one in itself is a tool. The other thing is like, have you ever written poetry before? >> Nothing that's published, but all in my notes app when I'm like, depressed. >> Tony Keith Jr.: So then that's where you start, right? Like, you have to be like a published poet, but you understand the writing in that regard and you start there. I think with young people, I think start there. Right? Yeah. >> Safia Elhillo: Um, yeah. Everything Tony said. I believe my book also has-- "Home Is Not a Country" I know for sure has an educator's guide. I'm not sure if "Bright Red Fruit" does, but I'm sure the internet knows. [Laughter] And I find those to be really helpful. But also, I think I, as an educator and as a student, always found questions to be the most useful and fertile part of the classroom experience. So I don't know that I was ever very receptive to being told something about something by my teachers. But if it was framed as a question and we were all going to arrive at the answer together, that felt a lot more generative and interesting and participatory. And so, um, I think framing it around the student's curiosities, around their own experiences, rather than being like, here's the deal about Sudanese people or whatever I think can make it a lot more interactive and helpful. And also, I think, make them feel a lot more agency around the text instead of being like, here is an external thing for you to understand and have a right or wrong answer to instead of being like, well, whatever you think is perhaps the right answer. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Tony Keith Jr.: You're welcome. You're welcome. >> Untia Bigelow: Thank you so much. [Applause] [Music]