This month we are so fortunate to feature Glory Edim, founder of the wildly popular platform Well-Read Black Girl, author of the newly released memoir, Gather Me, and editor of two anthologies, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves and On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library.

In this conversation, Glory and She Writes’ Editorial Director, Christelle Lujan,  talked about everything from the origin story of Well-Read Black Girl to the role community plays in her life as a writer to her writing routine and the wild and unpredictable ideas that end up in an author’s Notes app.

SW: At She Writes, we’re very focused on community. So I wanted to begin by asking you, what were your hopes when you started the Well-Read Black Girl community, and what have been some of the surprising things that have come out of it that you didn’t expect?

GE: Okay, wow, such a big question. For me, when I first got started, I really thought that, it was just going to be a book club, something where we would talk about books and engage with one another and build new friendships. But what has actually happened is I’ve created a space where we can really celebrate and amplify the voices of black women writers, and that has been such a magical, unbelievable experience.

I’ve been able to really lead this movement, and I feel really grateful that I’m able to create a supportive environment for black women writers where they can feel seen and heard, and I can be a champion for their work. I always envisioned the community being something where the love of reading was centered, and we could have honest conversations.

When I’m at my festival or I’m hosting a book club, I really think about how we can connect around identity, how we can represent ourselves in the larger literary world, and creating a safe space where we can really show up and be authentic. That really is always at the core of what I’m trying to build and what I’m trying to advocate online and offline.

SW: What role do you feel community plays in your own writing, and for writers in general? Writing can be a really isolating endeavor. What have you found that the community has brought to the table for you?

GE: There’s so many things. I think I’ve been really surprised at how rapidly the book club and the community has grown. The role of community really is essential. I wouldn’t be able to do the work I do without the incredible book club members that show up and participate, the amazing attendees at the festival. It really is a source of inspiration and we encourage and pursue one another. We give each other high fives and tell each other that we can do it. And what has happened is a lot of incredible conversations have been sparked within the space.

Community is something that could be a popular buzzword at the moment. When you say community, I think you have to really drill down to say what that means. And in my eyes, it’s being intentional. It’s making sure that you’re inviting voices that may be quieter or marginalized, that you’re extending yourself and making sure that everyone has a space to belong and show up.

That’s where community is essential. Not using it as a platitude, but really thinking about the actions and the resources you can provide and make sure that people feel connected to whatever it is. Whether it’s books or politics or, you know, climate change or food, there’s so many ways to create community. I really do believe in starting small and intentional.

I always tell people, the first two years of the Well-Read Black Girl Book Club, we had the same 10 to 15 women show up and participate. It was a slow and organic build and some movement. Now, we have incredible people and it’s grown to much more than a book club. We have so many other parts of the organization, but those first two years were so essential to the foundation that we built. Community is everything. It’s showing up for the people and showing that you care and that your intentions are good intentions. It’s not about posting an image on Instagram or putting it on Facebook. It’s how you show up for people day to day.

SW: I love that. Could you talk a little bit more about the festival and the book club itself and the podcast and how all the pieces intermingle with each other?

GE: Oh, yeah, absolutely. ​​I mean, we started off really small, and the book club was a group of people. We met in Brooklyn, New York, and we would go to authors’ houses and libraries and different cultural spaces and meet together. It was a very informal setting. Visually, you could just see a group of rambunctious, chatty black women sitting in a circle and talking about the book. So that’s how it essentially started.

I was encouraged by one of the book club members… excuse me, I was encouraged by an author, Tayari Jones—the author of American Marriage and several other amazing books. I was lucky enough to befriend her, and she was one of the first people to serve as a mentor and encouraged me to have a festival. She was saying, “you have something really special here, people are gravitating to it. You should turn this into a festival, invite people to come.” She volunteered to be our very first keynote speaker. I’m positive without Tayari’s encouragement and championing, I wouldn’t have been able to do that first festival in 2017. She was the person that gave me the courage to do a fundraiser and start to ask other people for help and really build this community of like minded people to create an event that went beyond the book club.

That was like the second part of growing [the community], and then within the last three years, I’ve made the transition from doing this book club and having a fiscal sponsor to creating my own nonprofit organization. Within that nonprofit, it’s really crucial for us to recognize the power of storytelling, and use storytelling to change the status quo. We are doing initiatives online to talk about censorship, to really embrace our role as storytellers and truth-tellers.

I’m really, really adamant about using Well-Read Black Girl as a channel for solidarity, for support and a shared platform for really confronting suppression. This week is Banned Book Week. There’s so many things we can do to get people mobilized and understand that we have a role as readers, as educators, as advocates, to really be passionate about keeping literature diverse and accessible in classrooms and in libraries. So I take the role that I play very seriously, and I’m always trying to find ways to advocate and bring people into the fold. So yes, from book club to the present iteration of Well-Read Black Girl, it has evolved, and I’m always trying to remain authentic to my voice and to my vision, and I do my best to really, again, invite people into the conversation and tell my own story and invite people to tell their own as well.

SW: Thank you for that. You mentioned Banned Books Week, and I had had a question around that, which you already partially answered, but I also wanted to ask what your thoughts were on how writers can continue to pursue their craft bravely in the current climate. What would be your recommendation to writers who are maybe hesitant or holding back from stepping into telling the story they want to tell?

GE: Oh, wow. I would say to underrepresented writers who feel nervous or feel hesitant about telling their stories, you know, just to remember that your voice is vital. It truly is vital. Stories can always tell, unique perspectives. They can share experiences. They can reveal vulnerabilities, whatever your experience, whatever the triumphs or challenges you may have experienced, your story can inspire other people in a way that you may have never expected. You know like you really have the power to challenge stereotypes, to broaden horizons. Really create a space for more diverse narratives, and I have found in this experience of building the community of Well-Read Black Girl, in writing my own memoir, I’ve really gained the self confidence to say that my story matters, and I hope that it will help someone else.

There are so many books that I’ve read, and they have mentored me. They have given me valuable life lessons. And I was able to do that within the pages of a book, you know, something accessible, something you can walk into a library and pick up off a shelf, and it can change your life. And I feel like that’s my testimony. You know, I have really been able to have some wonderful, amazing experiences, because I read a book. That’s such an accessible thing, you know? I’m so grateful for the libraries that I I attended as a child. I’m so grateful for the English teachers that humored me and gave me incredible books to read and debated me in class. It changed how I see the world, and it’s made me a pragmatic optimist. I’m very pragmatic, in a sense, but I’m also so full of hope and optimism about the future, because I can see how things can change very quickly if you put forth the effort and the love and enthusiasm to make the change.

SW: That’s a perfect segue into talking a little bit more about what inspired your memoir. Tell us a little bit about the origin of the idea for Gather Me, and then the process of what came out once you started writing,

GE: Oh, man, I will say, had I known the feelings and the emotional toll it takes to write a memoir, I might not have done it.

Memoir writing requires so much vulnerability, and there has to be a level of comfort you have when you’re sharing your personal experiences. So I had to definitely work through some hard moments and really unpack the experiences I had as a child, and the books that I read that shaped my viewpoints, it was a moment of deep self-reflection, and I felt really compelled to share emotional truths about my life and not hold back. So I tried to be very delicate and thoughtful about the process, and I wanted to share parts of my life that could serve the narrative and really share an important message. Or share parts of my journey that would help others. So I talked so much about my mom and our relationship, my experiences dealing with a close family member that had a mental health crisis, and how our family worked through it, how we grew stronger from it, how we built our resistance, our resilience. It was a bit challenging. I don’t even want to sugarcoat it. It took me a very long time and a lot of different drafts. And at the end of the day, what really pulled me forward was the birth of my son. I decided that this writing project, this book, would be a legacy piece for him. I wanted to really write down all the things that I felt were unanswered in my childhood and give him something to say, like, this is our history. There might be gaps in it, there might be some ups and downs, but this is the truth as I know it, and I want to really be honest and open with you and start a new chapter of our family life.

He was the beginning of that. And so the book ends with a note to my son, because he really spurred me forward. I don’t know if I could have finished it without thinking about him and how much I lovee him and how much I wanted him to have access to his–to our–story, our family story. So there was a balance between, the honesty and my own emotional well-being and aligning with the message that I felt could be universal. And the truth is that you can write a story that is true to you and authentic, and you can also help people at the same time. You know, it’s this, this balancing of just telling your truth and finding themes and moments that other people can relate to, and I think everyone could relate to reading and books.

That’s why when you read a book… like there’s been so many books I’ve read and I’ve cried and cried and cried. I’m like, Why am I crying? You know, like, I know this is sad, but it connects to something deep, deep within you. There’s like, a universal scene. And I hope that that moment of recognition is found with my readers too. I hope they see my experiences and can see themselves in it.

SW: I connect so much with the idea of writing for your children and that idea of legacy, and I think that so many of us, we either lose our parents or lose our grandparents, and you don’t really know them as well, and that idea of leaving something with your children to to know you far into the future as they grow is such a compelling purpose.

GE: Yes, absolutely. It keeps you grounded. And, yeah, I think just like writing, even if you don’t publish a book in a traditional sense, just simply writing things down for your children, is so valuable and so incredible. My father has since passed, and the things I cherish most are the letters he wrote to me. I love all the letters. I love seeing his handwriting. I feel connected to him in an even deeper way, because I have those in our family archives.

SW: In general, set the stage for what it looks like when you’re writing. Where do you write? How do your ideas form? Are you a binge writer? Do you sit down with a word count goal? Just give us a little bit of insight into just what your specific process looks like.

GE: So, I also have written, or edited and curated, two anthologies, and with that process, it involves a lot of deep research. I go to different archives, like the Schomburg in New York, and I go visit Howard University, use their research facilities there, and I will go through different archives. I’ll look for stories or find things that might be a little hidden or unexpected. I’m always trying to find pieces of black history, especially when it comes to black women writers that are unknown or need that further recognition or visibility. So that was what I did with my anthology On Girlhood: 15 Stories From the Well-Read Black Girl Library, I was seeking stories that had young, black girl protagonists, that were telling the stories of black girlhood, so that that was a really fun project that came from me just doing a lot of research and reading short stories and my first anthology. It was the breakout that really brought me into the role of editor and writer in a public sense.

I went to each of the authors that had been in the book club over the years and really asked them a pointed question: When did you first see yourself in literature? Could you answer that question in essay form, talk me through it and really give me the books that you read, the experiences you’ve had as a young person or in college, like what brought you to become a writer? That was such a beautiful experiment, the stories that they told and we shared together. There was this familiar feeling of belonging and love of black womanhood and just recognizing yourself in the story, which is really one of the greatest missions of our community. Both of those experiences required me getting into the library and doing research. So I will go there, and I will sit for days on end, kind of in a corner, going through things, putting on white gloves. I love that experience. When it came to writing my own memoir, that was different because I didn’t go to the archive. I literally just went into a hotel room.

SW: The internal archive.

GE: Yes, into my mind, and I kind of did this investigation of my own life where I would book a hotel room for about a week or a weekend, whatever time I could kind of slip away. And I would write out different scenes. I would pull out pictures. I have, I do have the habit of journaling. So I had the the fortune to have a lot of journals from when I was young that I could go through and look at the things that I wrote in the margins of a book. I even got to the point where I started to look up songs that I really loved as a teenager, or what was the title song in 1982, the year I was born. I, was trying to really do this kind of deep investigation of myself and the things that I was experiencing. And at times, I would start a group text with my friends from high school and ask some questions. I’m like, do you remember that time and Mr. Burns’s class? Or do you remember that time in AP English or world history, and we did this? I would just kind of ask these questions, to fact check my memory as I was writing.

So, in both scenarios, I have to really be in solitude. I have to be surrounded by books. I have to either be locked away in a hotel room and writing for days, or in the library doing research. I don’t typically write. I’m not one of those wake-up-at-5am-and-write kind of writers, you know, in my corner office, it’s just the way my life is set up. I’m a little bit chaotic at times, or unorganized. I have to really step away from my house. Otherwise I just see the laundry that needs to be folded. Or my son’s running around. I prefer leaving my home space to write in binges.

I guess I’m a sprint writer, you know? And I also really love editors. I am an editor’s girl, okay?I have no problem writing everything down and then being like, “Okay, what do you think of this? Let’s go back and forth.” So I did have my incredible publisher editor, but I also had an outside developmental editor that I talked to, that I shared notes with, that I really had a good checks and balances with to make sure that I was really writing the story that I wanted to with my memoir, and making sure thematically it had a good flow, it had energy, because the books that I really enjoy reading have a pace to them and a rhythm, and there are subjects in my memoir that are very heavy. Parts where I’m talking about mental health crises. I’m talking about separation and the death of my father. They were very heavy topics, and I didn’t want it to fail, feel compressed or downtrodden, by any means. I really wanted it to have this sense that we’re moving along. In the book, I’m telling you these things, but we’re also feeling a sense of hope and a sense of authenticity. There’s a pace that goes along with it, and. almost like listening to your favorite song, there’s a rhythm. When you listen to a beautiful, sad song, there’s a rhythm that holds your heart. I wanted my writing and the prose to really feel conversational, but hold people’s attention so they keep reading. Any good writer knows the value of their editor and having someone else read their work and give you feedback.

SW: What are some of your favorite memoirs that you feel like kind of exist in the same category of yours?

GE: Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. So this is why the book took me so long to write, because I love so many memoirs, and I’m just like, there’s no way that mine could be on the same level.

Of course, there’s the Holy Grail. I love every single memoir or autobiography that Maya Angelou ever wrote. I mean, I love her work, and I’ve been reading it for so long. A more contemporary book would be The Yellow House by Sarah Broom. I love that book. I just love how she talks about landscape and people, and it’s a mix of just like her family history. The research she did for that book was so incredible.

Another recent book that I’m, like, obsessed with is Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon. Oh there’s also Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, love love love that book It’s so, so beautiful. I’m also a huge Anne Lamott fan, Bird by Bird sets the precedent. So I’ve read that, but she has so many other books. Most recently I read Somehow, which is a beautiful book. It’s not a memoir, per se, it’s kind of her life reflections about love and finding love. So anything written by Anne Lamott, I’m just like, I’m eating it up with a spoon, she’s so fantastic. So, and then this also might be a common one, but, Eat, Pray, Love, I love Elizabeth Gilbert.

SW: It’s kind of one of those standards. A lot of people, that’s maybe the only memoir they’ve ever read.

GE: It’s true. Yeah, it’s such a popular one I love. Oh, and then I have, again, another person that I admire greatly, that I’ve had the fortune to build a relationship with over the years. She’s been a huge supporter of, Well-Read Black Girl. Her name is Marita Golden. I read this book in college, and it’s called Migrations of the Heart, and it’s such a good book. Oh my gosh, it might even be out of print now. It’s such a wonderful book. And I remember coming across it and being like, wow, because, all the things she experienced and she talks about. She’s American, but she had married someone who was Nigerian and had lived overseas. So I had that connection with her, where I felt very seen in that book, because of her observations of Nigerian culture, but also the duality of her being American. And so my background is being Nigerian American, being born here, but having roots. Both my parents are Nigerian, so, that’s another great memoir, Migrations of the Heart by Marita Golden. There’s so many books that I admire and I love and I have on my shelf. I’d be honored if anyone put me in a category with any of those incredible writers. But they are, they are amazing people.

SW: What is the best writing advice you’ve received for someone who is just getting started? Or your best advice for someone who’s just getting started.

GE: My advice is to write consistently and don’t wait for inspiration. If I have a spark of an idea, even if it’s just like a sentence, I will write it down in my notes app. I will jot it down in my notebook and try to build upon it and I think that the idea of constantly writing down your ideas and finding a way to chronicle your thoughts on a daily basis just adds so much more to your interior life.

Before I stepped into this role as editor and writer I did that before. I was always writing down quotes that I loved or art that inspired me and I would have sticky notes or things in my journal that I wanted to kind of go down a rabbit hole on later because I was curious about it so that habit has really served me as a writer.

And I think that another big thing is: don’t strive for perfection in the first draft. Allow yourself to write freely knowing that you can go back and revise, knowing that you can have an editor support you whether that’s your friend who’s helping you workshop or in a more professional sense. I think it offers the sense of freedom and allows you to be more experimental if you say “It’s okay. I’m doing this and any of the feedback I get is only going to help me.” If you disagree with the feedback that’s also a good sign too because it helps you sharpen or further articulate what you want to say. Sometimes when someone says something to me or offers me feedback that I don’t agree with I’m also really excited about that I’m like, “Okay, why did they come to that conclusion? How can I improve my argument or change the sentence structure? How can I make this a better piece so the message I’m trying to convey lands well?”

So those two things and then just read a lot. I am Well-Read Black Girl through and through, but I read everything and anything. In this memoir I talk about Little Women and I talk about Hatchet and I talk about books people probably wouldn’t expect because I like to read everything. I really love the written word. I love reading translations.

You know at one point I had this small obsession where I was reading speeches. I would just read people’s speeches because I love how persuasive words can be and how people use them to reflect ideas and pull people into movement as we see with the presidential election coming on. I was just stuck to the screen when Kamala Harris was doing her speech. It’s just so powerful. Speech writers are. The written word, anything that’s from pen to paper.

To get back to your question, I would say my advice is exposing yourself to different styles, voices, techniques. All of those things help you find your own voice and it sharpens your skills.

SW: Totally, I definitely have this fantasy of being able to read other authors’ Notes apps.

GE: Oh my god, girl that’s a podcast you better…

SW: It is, or even just snippets I just wanna see the most unhinged things people have written in their notes among all those brilliant ideas. I’ll go back and read mine and be like “Who were you that day?”

GE: It’s true. Again, it’s part of that interior life. It’s the things that grab your attention. The other day—I love animal documentaries—and the Planet Earth 2 documentary came on Netflix and I was thinking about the jungle and writing random things about the jungle in my Notes app. What I will use that for, I do not know.

SW: I wanted to ask you what role you feel story plays in the effort to create a better future. In the midst of the chaos we all seem to be living through at the moment, what role do you feel story plays?

GE: Oh that’s a beautiful question. I think stories really help us broaden our understanding of each other and help us build empathy. I’m always curious about how people come to have their beliefs and hold on to different ideologies and I think that the more we can find ways to connect with one another and use stories as a tool to challenge that status quo, it brings people closer. You know there have been so many times where I’ve used a story or a book in our book club discussions to set up different scenarios or offer a different perspective that the person may not have thought of and I think it’s so essential to developing one’s critical analysis and opening up their worldview. You know not everyone can hop on a plane and travel across the world, but you can do that within the context of reading and connecting with the people. You can learn about different cultures, different ideologies, and just different perspectives of the world. And I think we need more of that and allowing stories to kind of be a part of that toolkit. I don’t think it’s the only thing, I don’t believe it’s just like pick up a book and that’s the thing.

SW: If only. I’d just be throwing books at people all day if that were the case.

GE: Seriously, but I do believe that it is a very, very good starting point and a very accessible one which is essential. So yeah I think that it really helps us understand each other and open our empathy to one another.

SW: Yeah, it’s sort of wild in a time where there’s so much information accessible that people’s views seem to be narrowing and narrowing, and a book I feel like blows that back open.

GE: Yeah, because books are so transformative. When you engage with them they can motivate you and they can introduce you to new ideas. They’re just so, so transformative, so I’m so surprised that people would have the audacity to want to ban them. That’s just so wild to me. I’m like what are we doing?

SW: I’m not sure anybody knows anymore. I’m not sure anybody knows what they’re doing. I’m feeling more like that each and every day. Okay, and finally what are your future plans for the Well-Read Black Girl platform? Are you working on another book? What are some upcoming events you have? Anything that you want to share?

GE: Oh yeah absolutely. Well, the next thing that our organization is preparing for is our Well-Read Black Girl festival which is happening on October 26th in New York City. We have an incredible lineup that includes Edwidge Danticat, Safiya Sinclair, Nikole Hannah-Jones. Incredible writers across genres. Romance writers, nonfiction, contemporary literature. It’s just a blowout. I’m really excited to have all these incredible writers in the room with one another and our theme is going to be “New Visions: The Future of Storytelling” because each of these writers has contributed to the literary canon in their unique ways, they just are so phenomenal. And I want us to think about how we can continue to innovate when it comes to publishing and the industry. How we can really offer advice to the publishing industry. We can create a more accessible network of resources. We could share industry insights and connect with other professionals in the publishing industry, like editors and marketing professionals. I just want to go beyond the author. I want us to continue to think about the entire industry as this ecosystem where we can all support each other and help each other. So we’re very excited for the festival to be coming back and we are continuing to build upon it.

We always need financial support. Any way to grow the organization. It is something that from our inception we’ve been trying to do. I self-fund a majority of the things, but I’m always trying to grow. And that’s the main reason why I decided to move in the direction of building a nonprofit because I wanted people to have access and I wanted to be able to apply for grants and such.

The second thing that I’m very very excited about is I am really leaning into my role as an editor and I have a partnership with Live Right (?) and I am editing two books right now that are going to be coming out in 2025. I just finished editing the first one which is called The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward and this is her first work of fiction. She’s done poetry collections in the past and she’s done a memoir so this is her first time doing a fiction book. It’s avant-garde, it is a mix of beautiful prose and suspense. I’m so excited for folks to read this book and to see me in another role as being an editor and really championing this new work. And so I’m really excited for this partnership. We are not calling it an imprint. It’s genuinely a partnership, and I committed to doing two books and Yrsa’s book is the first and we’re going to build upon it. It’s basically called the Well-Read Black Girl literary series and the reason I decided on this structure is because everyone initially is like “Why don’t you just do an imprint?” And, like anything else, I just want to be intentional and work slowly and I wanted to be in partnership with another editor so I could learn. Kind of have my own version of editor school. And really work with their team to make sure that I was able to learn about acquisition and putting the book together and going to sales conferences. Every step of the process of editing and putting together the book, I’ve been able to do in partnership with their incredible editorial team and I’m so happy that this is our first book. She’s an incredible writer. So those are the two things within our ecosystem. The festival bringing everyone together in-person and then this new literary series that’s launching in 2025.