Nearly a year since she was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump as librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden stood before hundreds of cheering members of the literary community as she received a Champion of Writers Award from the Authors Guild on Monday.
apnews.com/article/carl...
“I am trying to get people to see not only the Delta, but also the way that the Delta is this mirror to America. But there is a veil over the mirror. If you lift off the veil and then you look closely, you do see America staring back at you.”
youtube.com/watch?v=EKsM...
@wralpheubanks.bsky.social owes his relationship with and his love for the Mississippi Delta to his father, who took on regular trips there when he was a boy. Those were also father-son bonding trips.
“Some people say, “I just use it to brainstorm ideas.” If you don’t know what to paint, or compose, or write, you’re in the wrong job. Art is the business of making up stuff — go make up some stuff.”
@colsonwhitehead.com weighs in on AI!
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...
It is a subject that I write about in "When It's Darkness on the Delta" in the chapter "Hunger Has No Color Line," excerpted here.
mississippitoday.org/2026/01/08/b...
In the 1960s, Dr. H. Jack Geiger of the Delta Health Center prescribed food for patients to be purchased at Black-owned grocery stores and paid for it with a mix of federal dollars and grants intended for pharmaceuticals. So the idea of food as medicine is not new.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/d...
In @wralpheubanks.bsky.social’s WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA, you’ll meet farmer Calvin Head. He runs a cooperative of Black farmers in Holmes Country and talks about all the hurdles they’re facing today. There’s a hidden history behind those hurdles. buff.ly/scy4Qgr
Last night I read from my book “When It’s Darkness on the Delta” at the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, MS. You could say I was one of the warm up acts for blues legend Bobby Rush, who wowed the crowd.
I so enjoyed the conversation on “We, the Unhoused.” Give it a listen.
Ok, Let’s Go, Blue!
Very excited for @joshgondelman.bsky.social to host the upcoming @authorsguild.org gala partly because I have so many questions I want to ask Cord Jefferson about his The Corrections adaptation.
authorsguild.org/foundation/g...
Come to Clarksdale, MS Friday for Thacker Mountain Radio! Music by blues legend Bobby Rush, Twurt Chamberlain, and Paul Tate and the Yallowbushwackers. I’ll be there as well, talking with host Jim Dee’s about my book “When It’s Darkness on the Delta.” Bring a lawn chair!
@wralpheubanks.bsky.social has seen SINNERS 3 times! (YAY!) He says the vampire is an apt metaphor for the vampirism Black communities of the Mississippi Delta experience in the form of economic oppression.
Perfect April 1 column from @roncharles.bsky.social , one that mirrors the real news in publishing of late.
open.substack.com/pub/roncharl...
Editors’ Note: March 30, 2026: A reader recently alerted The Times that this review included language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian. We spoke to the author of this piece, a freelancer reviewer, who told us he used an A.I. tool that incorporated material from the Guardian review into his draft, which he failed to identify and remove. His reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer are a clear violation of The Times’s standards. The reviewer said he had not used A.I. in his previous reviews for The Times, and we have found no issues in those pieces. The Guardian review of “Watching Over Her” can be read here.
Jaysus Effin' Christ. I hope this leads to a better policy of scrutiny. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/b...
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-br4yw...
@wralpheubanks.bsky.social
@beaconpress.bsky.social
#blacksky #politics #podcast
On the next episode of A Moment with Erik Fleming!
@wralpheubanks.bsky.social
@beaconpress.bsky.social
#blacksky #politics #podcast #nokings
“The song shares the line with the title of W. Ralph Eubanks’s recent book, “When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land,” as well as the title of a…song that painted the region’s overt racism with nostalgic hues.”
oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/lucin...
As a Mississippian, @wralpheubanks.bsky.social refers to Chicago as the Up South. You can see the cultural influence of the South, particularly from the Mississippi Delta, in Chicago. You could also call it Mississippi North. 😉 buff.ly/9z53Hns
"US leads worldwide decline in academic freedom. Academic freedom has declined more quickly in the United States than any other country in the past year, but it is a significant contributor to a worrying global trend of continuing decline in academic freedom, according to a new report."
If the administration feels no need to explain itself to a reliably subservient Congress, and if the president assumes that whatever he does in office enjoys legal sanction and limited oversight, what need will he feel to explain himself to the American people?
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/o...
May 17: Who are the We in "We the People?" Two of our most brilliant writers on Constitutional history and American identity, on the centuries-long, back and forth struggle to extend the protection of the Constitution to those excluded from it.
www.chicagohumanities.org/events/atten...
“It is time,” Panievsky concludes, “we all become actively responsible for our information environment.” Given the powerful forces determined to pollute our environment, that calm advice is a muffled scream. open.substack.com/pub/roncharl...
Publishers have maintained a firm line against A.I.-generated text and images, and require authors to attest that their work is original in their publishing contracts. But few have clear policies or measures to prevent users from writing with A.I.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/b...
“American cinema needs more of this raw truth — stories that pulse in the blood and set spirits free. We don’t need endless remakes. We need the conjure, the haints and the original hope that comes from knowing exactly who we are.” www.ms.now/opinion/ryan...
So cool that people are still discovering this #Sinners syllabus, published by the African American Intellectual History Society, and composed by Jemar Tisby & Keisha N. Blain. Enjoy!
Many of these men in the Delta are the descendants of colonists who, beginning in the eighteen-thirties, embarked on the “Great Trek,” a migration from the coast of South Africa into the region’s interior to establish farms. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
