On America: Black Women on Feminism and Pop Culture with Sesali Bowen, Zeba Blay, and Shayla Lawson

In Conversation

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  Zeba Blay

  Zeba Blay

  Zeba Blay is a film and culture critic who has contributed to publications including the New York Times, the Village Voice, ESSENCE, Shadow and Act, Film Quarterly, and Indiewire. Formerly Senior Culture Writer at HuffPost, Blay has spent her nearly decade-long career writing about pop culture at the intersection of race, gender, and identity. Born in Accra, Ghana she is based in the New York City area.

  Photo Credit: Sylvie Rosokoff

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  Sesali Bowen

  Sesali Bowen

  Sesali Bowen is a writer who curates events, writes for film and television, and creates elevated pop culture correspondence. Bowen is the former Senior Entertainment Editor at NYLON magazine and Senior Entertainment Writer at Refinery29. Focusing on Black pop culture, she helped launch Unbothered, R29’s sub brand for Black women. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Feministing. Bowen lives in New Jersey.

  Photo Credit: Nailah Fumilayo Davis

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  Shayla Lawson

  Shayla Lawson

  Shayla Lawson is the author of This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope (Harper Perennial, 2020) and three poetry collections: I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean, A Speed Education in Human Being, and PANTONE.

  She has also recently appeared on OPB with Tiffany Camhi, NPR’s Live Wire Radio broadcast, The Special Report with Areva Martin, Salon Talks with D. Watkins, The True Romance Podcast, at The Center for Fiction with 2 Dope Queens’ Phoebe Robinson, Storybound by LitHub, at The Strand with Ashley C. Ford, Memoir Monday, and the Tanz Im August Art Festival in Berlin, Germany.

  She is a regular columnist at Bustle magazine and has written for ESPN, Guernica, Vulture, New York, and the Cut. Shayla is a MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow and a 2020 National Book Critics Circle Finalist.

  Photo Credit: Nicholas Nichols