Summer 2026

As I type this in the first days of summer, New York City is still riding high from our Knicks win in five and, as excited as I am about the win, I’m even more excited that it is officially Read Outside Season!

There are some fantastic guests coming to the Additions to the Archive podcast! We’ve got poets, including Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston with her latest, Praisesong for the People; and winner of the American Book Award, Whiting Award, and LAMBDA Literary Award, Phillip B. Williams with Lift Every Voice. We’ll dive into southern history with scholars Dr. Elizabeth West and Dr. Muhammad Fraser-Rahim in Gullah-Geechee Diasporas; and through photographs with Dr. Blair L.M. Kelley in Black Freedom: a Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days. And we’ll take the pod outside with educator Maria Pinto in Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival; and Dr. Beronda Montgomery’s When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy.

As usual, the Adoption Pop! podcast has got me reading some things I wouldn’t normally in preparation for upcoming episodes, including Three Bags Full (Leonie Swann); The Blind Side (Michael Lewis); and I Beat the Odds (Michael Oher).

And, as this summer marks the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I won’t make it through without at least a few US History reads. (Okay, I read US History every month of every year, but here is what’s on my TBR this summer!) A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution (Andrew Lawler); 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History (Charles Bracelen Flood); and The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America (John Wood Sweet).