Hey Writers, What’s on Your Desk?

From some of the Afrofuturism storybundle authors–

Andrea Hairston, author of Will Do Magic for Small Change

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
New Suns anthology edited by Nisi Shawl
Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves by Frans de Waal
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina
Sweat a play by Lynn Nottage
Flyin’ West a play by Pearl Cleage
Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille Dungy

Ayize Jama-Everett, author of The Liminal People

What is this desk you speak of?  :)  I don’t do the  “a clean well lit place” sort of thing.  Mostly because my life has been in a unique form of free fall for the past two years (MFA land). Instead, I grab a laptop, hope the battery is good enough, find a caf,e buy the cheapest cup of tea I can find, and get to writing.  usually, I’ve got headphones on.  sometimes, I write in my car, parked by a park. In the past, I’ve written on index cards because that’s what one of my heroes did. So there is no desk, only the writing.

Nicole Givens Kurtz, author of Silenced

My laptop, my legal pad, and coffee if it’s morning, iced water if it is noon, and wine if it’s after 6 p.m.

Nisi Shawl, author of Filter House

Mounds of notebooks I make my way through dexterously.  A defunct printer.  A cigar box full of business cards.  A small purple plastic chest full of beaded sea creatures, paperclips, kaleidoscopes, key rings, white out, and thumb drives.  A tin snake from Mexico.  A lapis lazuli egg.  A Lego mermaid.  A Lenovo ThinkPad.  A box cutter.  An empty baking powder can I use as an ashtray.  An empty baked bean can I use as a pencil holder.  A goosenecked lamp with additional pencil-holding compartments built into its base.  My make-up kit.  Three potted plants.  (It’s a very big desk.)

 Ivor Hartmann, editor of AfroSF

Too much as per usual and that’s how I like it, but I am currently reading Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu.