Writing While Black

A podcast for Black and Brown writers who know their block isn't about discipline; it's about wounds. Hosted by High Priestess Lakeisha, developmental editor and founder of The Story Temple, each episode explores ancestral silence, the white gaze, nervous system patterns that shape creative resistance, and craft practices rooted in truth instead of performance. Ebonics as literary language. Code-switching as a choice, not obligation. Writing rage without apology. No performance required. thestorytemple.substack.com

Writing While Black is a society podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 10 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Writing While Black, a society show with 10 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #5

  What I mean when I say “I wasn’t pulled in”

  Mar 26, 202620 minS1

  <p>In this episode, I talk about a sentence I’ve written in editorial letters more times than I can count: I wasn’t pulled in. I break down what I actually mean when I write it — and why it has nothing to do with showing versus telling. If you haven’t listened yet, start there. These notes pick up where the episode lands.</p><p>Once you settle the question of showing versus telling — once you accept that technique isn’t the issue — you’re left with a harder question.</p><p>If it’s not about the technique, what exactly is at...

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  Episode #4

  Your body knows: On what we were taught, and what it costs our writing

  Mar 12, 202614 minS1

  <p>Nobody taught us to listen to our bodies.</p><p>For a lot of Black and Brown people — particularly women — the opposite was true. We were taught that the body is to be beaten into submission. The thing you override. The thing you push past on the way to wherever you’re going.</p><p>We were told: Don’t cry. Stop being so sensitive. You’re too emotional. Toughen up.</p><p>Strength looked like not feeling. Or more accurately — it looked like feeling and not showing it. Feeling and not responding to it. Feeling and continuing anyway, like the fee...

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  Episode #3

  Stop diluting your truth: James Baldwin and the Worthiness Wound

  Feb 26, 202617 minS0

  <p>James Baldwin didn’t mistake comfort for clarity.</p><p>He loved America. He said so plainly. And because he loved her, he insisted on the right to criticize her perpetually. That’s not a contradiction. That’s integrity.</p><p>In this episode, we move from silence to something more difficult: refusal.</p><p>The Worthiness Wound doesn’t silence you. It negotiates you. It convinces you to pre-soften your truth before anyone asks you to. It teaches you to cook your sentences for someone else’s stomach. To translate yourself. To balance what doesn’t need balancing. To sand down...

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  Episode #2

  Your silence will not protect you: Writing past the Wound of Silence

  Feb 12, 202611 minS1

  <p>There is a kind of silence that looks like wisdom.</p><p>It shows up as restraint. As discernment. As knowing when not to say too much. For Black and Brown folks especially, silence has often been a strategy — one that kept us alive in rooms that were never built for our truth.</p><p>But there is another kind of silence.The kind that lives in the body.</p><p>The silence that tightens your chest right when you’re about to write the sentence that matters.The silence that makes you abandon projects right before they’re finish...

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  Episode #6

  You don’t have to perform or conform: Leo full moon guidance

  Feb 1, 20261h 14mS1

  <p>This reading happened kind of spontaneously. Empress Theadora and I were on FaceTime, winding down at the end of the workday like we usually do, and she mentioned needing to do her full moon reading. I just happened to be shuffling my cards at the same time — which I don’t usually do when we’re just talking — and she asked me if I wanted to do the reading with her. And I said, “I’m down for that.”</p><p>We weren’t sure how it would go because we’ve never intentionally done a collective reading like this. But it ended...

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