• Commonplace Podcast Newsletter
  • Posts
  • Episode 124: Hafizah Geter & “The Black Period” (a "Reading with Rachel" / Commonplace School event and conversation)

Episode 124: Hafizah Geter & “The Black Period” (a "Reading with Rachel" / Commonplace School event and conversation)

Rachel speaks with poet, memoirist and literary agent Hafizah Geter about her recently published memoir The Black Period: On Personhood, Race and Origin. They speak one-on-one over zoom and then, a few weeks later, at the live-virtuaReading with Rachel salon. They speak about being poets writing prose, about writing to think and talking to think, MFA programs, writing classes, beauty, erasure, revision, being a craft junkie, TV, resisting “the privilege to obscure,” finding the question your book is trying to answer, writing yourself out of the shame you were given, rethinking reading and writing as solitary experiences, getting over the embarrassment of not knowing, and writing all over the walls.

Author

Commonplace Podcast
April 12, 2024

Dear Listener,

I am very excited to announce that our latest episode with Hafizah Augustus Geter, author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “The Black Period,” has just been released! Here, Rachel speaks with Geter on two occasions, one being the most recent Reading with Rachel session in March! I had the pleasure of listening in on the Reading with Rachel conversation and it was incredible to hear Geter’s insights on the publishing industry and her craft techniques. She is both a literary agent and an author herself, so having these insights from both sides of the publishing world was truly incredible! I am delighted to finally share this conversation with you all on behalf of all of us at Commonplace.

From this episode, we felt inspired to come up with an exclusive craft prompt for our patrons to try a brainstorming technique that Hafizah uses herself—sign up and become a Patron for Commonplace to check it out! Here is some more information on Hafizah Geter:

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian U.S. writer born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin, (Random House, 2022) is a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, and winner of a 2023 PEN Open Book Award and a 2023 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Un-American (Wesleyan University Press), an NAACP Image Award and PEN Open Book Award finalist. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Bomb Magazine, Boston Review, The Believer, The Paris Review, The Funambulist, and Harper's Bazaar, among others. She is a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

If listening to this episode made you want to join us for a future Reading with Rachel class—you’re in luck! You can still sign up here. Here’s a preview of upcoming classes:

  • In April, we’ll welcome Eugenia Leigh to discuss her book of poetry Bianca

  • Sabrina Orah Mark will join us in May—her latest is called Happily

  • For June, Rachel will discuss her own book, SoundMachine

  • In July, we’ll have Brenda Shaughnessey visit to talk about her collection, Tanya

  • For August, we are planning something very exciting for you!

If you’d like to know more about Reading with Rachel and other Commonplace School classes, check out our new website: commonplace.today where you’ll also find all Commonplace episodes, extra resources for each episode and transcripts for almost every episode! And if you are interested in supporting us here at Commonplace—we operate without any institutional funding—or just interested in free writing perks like our exclusive Craft Prompt, I encourage you to support us on Patreon! I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Wesleyan University Press and Random House for giving us copies of Un-American and The Black Period respectively to give away to our book club members!

In honor of this episode Commonplace’s charitable partner will donate $250 to the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA), an organization that supports Sudanese lives by providing accessible healthcare and a wide range of science education and research to improve their quality of life. 

Please also consider sharing this episode with a poetry lover in your life, also give our recent Instagram post a like or share: @commonplacepod 

Thank you so much to Rachel, for entrusting me to write another newsletter for you all, and to my other Commonplace colleagues, Christine Larusso and Leigh Sugar, for producing Episode 124 with me.

With love,

Lola Anaya