I believe that the act of witnessing is integral to the role of art, especially in this particular moment in our nation. Eddie Glaude, the author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, said in a recent workshop that the poet’s work is to give voice to the suffering, to make it real. As he so eloquently put it, “some of us have to become poets; but all of us have to bear witness.” I want us to hear these writers’ voices — or their characters — and to be moved to take some kind of action.

I founded Story Remedy as an intentional space to share stories — our own and others — and to engage in some way with my deep rooted belief that art and activism must go hand in hand. I am most moved by writing that bears witness to the world around us; that makes reading an act of resistance; that recognizes language as rebellion; and that teaches us the power of using “words as a weapon,” as Richard Wright so beautifully put it.