How to Have an Opinion in Memoir, featuring Mychal Denzel Smith

Sep 12, 2022

Mychal Denzel Smith

This week’s episode is a celebration of opinion, of boldly stating what you mean and what matters to you and why. Writing is an exercise in truth-telling, and when it’s your personal truth—no matter what your genre—it’s scary as hell. And while this week centers memoir, the episode is for anyone who’s trying to write what they think. It’s about why it matters that writers synthesize, interpret, make meaning, extrapolate, and also examines consequences—for you as a writer, and also for the world outside of you. If you’re wrestling with truth, with fallout, with consequences, with what’s at stake—Mychal Denzel Smith will provoke many questions and leave you inspired.

ABOUT MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH

Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of the New York Times bestseller Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and Stakes Is High, winner of the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. Smith is host of the podcast, “Open Forum,” on LitHub Radio and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Harper’s, Artforum, Oxford American, New Republic, The Nation, and more. In 2014 and 2016, TheRoot.com named him one of the 100 Most Influential African-Americans in their annual The Root 100 list. He lives and writes in Brooklyn.

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