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Rebecca Carroll
Writer, Cultural Critic, Podcast Host, Producer, Curator
Rebecca Carroll is a multifaceted creative professional based in Brooklyn, New York, currently self-employed. Her work spans various media platforms, including writing, podcasting, and event curation. Carroll is recognized as a writer, cultural critic, podcast host, producer, and curator.
Professional Background
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Current Role: As a creative professional, Carroll has been self-employed since November 2020. In this capacity, she creates and hosts content across diverse platforms, including online magazines, podcasts, television, and live events. She is noted for her collaborative storytelling approach and her ability to identify and promote exceptional talent.1
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Previous Experience: Carroll serves as Editor At Large at The Meteor, where she leads storytelling initiatives and develops special projects focused on the experiences of Black women in America. She has also held significant roles at WNYC/New York Public Radio and has contributed to major publications such as The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times.12
Notable Works
Rebecca Carroll is the author of several influential books, including:
- Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America
- Surviving the White Gaze, a critically acclaimed memoir.12
Podcasts and Events
She hosts the podcast Come Through with Rebecca Carroll, which features essential conversations about race, and the award-winning Billie Was a Black Woman, an Audible original. Additionally, she has created and curated live events that showcase the narratives of Black women through various artistic expressions.1
Education
Carroll holds a BA in Nonfiction Literary Writing from Hampshire College and a BA in Literary Journalism from the University of New Hampshire, where she was also the founder of the first Black Student Union in two decades.1
Overall, Rebecca Carroll is a prominent voice in discussions around race, culture, and media, leveraging her extensive experience to foster dialogue and understanding through her creative endeavors.
Highlights
Thirty years after its original publication, this newly imagined edition brings the work and musings of fifteen Black literary luminaries in conversation with a new generation of writers and readers.
The first edition of I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like, published in 1994, remains an essential text for readers of Black feminist literature in all genres. Featuring interviews with and excerpts by writers like Rita Dove, Pearl Cleage, Barbara Neely, June Jordan, and others, this indispensable work speaks to the intersections of politics and art-making along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and class.
Now, writer and cultural critic Rebecca Carroll presents the original conversations alongside personalized introductions by some of the brightest voices in today’s literary world, including Donika Kelly, Safiya Sinclair, Diamond Sharp, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, among others. This new edition also includes an introductory poem by Morgan Parker, a foreword by Salamishah Tillet, and a new author’s note. The new contributors carry the torch of the original interviewees’ lives and words with heart, rigor, gratitude, and radical imagination, illuminating how these conversations are about more than just writing—they are about life, relationships, joy, gratitude, wellness, and self-preservation.
I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like is a book unbound by time, lifting up a chorus of past and present voices. Paying homage to a historic lineage of Black feminist writers and their impact on our current literary landscape, it is a book by and for the storytellers, the poets, the playwrights, the dreamers, and all readers interested in what it means to make art within and from marginalized spaces.
Preorder at Haymarket Books: https://lnkd.in/eJDRUfKT
Four years after George Floyd’s murder, I realized that I simply do not have it in me to write another piece about Black pain, patterns and cycles of violent racism, and the endless trauma that continues to course through our bodies and bloodlines. I’ve literally written hundreds of them. I’m tired. And it feels like nothing ever changes.
But years ago, I asked the late civil rights activist Julian Bond how he managed to stay hopeful in the face of what often feels like little progress. He said, “There are enough victories to keep hope alive, and that’s what activism is.” And so I keep looking for the victories, which lately has meant having conversations with folks, particularly younger folks, who are deep in the work with fresh eyes, bright minds, and open hearts.
Prentis Hemphill is one of those folks, one who, right on time, has a new book out called What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. The author, therapist, and organizer spoke with me about the power of collective grief, finding the small openings of possibility, and the necessity of visual longing.
