2025 Maya Angelou Book Award winner Alison C. Rollins joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her 2024 poetry collection Black Bell. She explores the history and symbolism of a bell-laden iron device used to control and torture enslaved people and describes the replica she created after studying metalworking. She also recounts the story of Harriet Jacobs, who spent seven years hidden in her grandmother’s attic before escaping slavery. Rollins talks about how her poems engage in call and response with other texts, including the music of Sun Ra and Stevie Wonder and images connected to ornithology, anatomy, Afrofuturism, and the history of slavery. She reflects on who has historically been granted the title of “poet” in America and discusses the archival research behind her writing. Rollins rings a glass bell and reads several poems from Black Bell.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Amelia Fisher, Victoria Freisner, Wil Lasater, and S E Walker.

Alison C. Rollins

• Black Bell
• Library of Small Catastrophes

Others:

• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
• The Divine Comedy - Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Wu - Tang Clan - Enter The Wu - Tang (36 Chambers) [Full Album Mix]

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