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00:00Okay, I'm going to introduce you three amazing folks. First we have Zakiya Zalia Harris. She
00:23received her MFA in creative writing from the new school. Her debut novel, The Other Black Girl,
00:29was an instant New York Times bestseller. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Cosmo,
00:34The Guardian, The New York Times, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn. Let's welcome
00:40Zakiya. I might want to use the mic next time. Let's try that. Next we have R.K. Russell. He was
00:54a professional football player in the NFL and is a social justice advocate, published poet,
01:00essayist, and artist. A decorated defensive end, he has sacked Hall of Famers and gone up against
01:06the fiercest competitors at the height of their game. Since coming out, he has written about his
01:12experience as a black queer man in sports for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times,
01:17Out Magazine, and Queer Majority, among others. Russell has spearheaded multiple NFL pride initiatives,
01:24such as the NFL Super Bowl pride and the NFL's national coming out day. He has been honored by
01:31the Human Rights Campaign by Gay Times UK as Sports Person of the Year and was selected to the
01:37prestigious Out 100 list in 2019. His short documentary, Finding Free, was recently nominated
01:44for a Sports Emmy and a Webby. He lives in Los Angeles. Let's welcome R.K.
01:48And we have Marissa Moore. Marissa is a registered dietitian nutritionist with a background in chronic
02:00disease prevention and culinary nutrition. Now she runs a popular food blog with more than 52,000
02:07followers on Instagram. Her science-based nutrition advice and popular blog have made her a well-known,
02:13trusted expert. She's a go-to source for the media, with features in People Magazine, New York Times,
02:20The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Embassy Nightly News, and many other major news outlets. Let's welcome Marissa.
02:26All right, let's get started. First, I just want to say, you know, in addition to being an editor,
02:38I'm also an author and I was at, here at Essence Fest promoting my first book back in 2010. So it's a
02:46really beautiful full circle moment for me to be here with three authors promoting their first book.
02:52It's incredible. We're going to get started right away. Russ, I'm going to start with you.
02:58Okay.
02:58Your book, The Yards Between Us, from Anscape Books. You had to do a lot of deciding,
03:05what am I going to tell? What am I not going to tell? Who am I going to have to say,
03:10this is you in this book? And who am I going to have to say, don't worry, you're not in the book?
03:15How did you make those choices?
03:17Oh my gosh. It was a tough decision, I think, at the beginning because I was looking at it the
03:21wrong way. I was looking at it in terms of people that would be maybe upset, people that would be
03:26hurt, the people that I felt obligated to include for whatever reason. But it comes down to really
03:32who you're writing the book for. For me, The Yards Between Us was for myself, first and foremost,
03:38to tell my story, to share in a way that I had never done before and to really look at my life
03:42in genuine wholeness and to express that. And it was also for the little R.K. Russells out there in
03:48the world, the little black boys who didn't see themselves represented in sports or in the LGBTQ
03:53plus community or in between those intersections. And at the end of the day, there were parts of my
03:58story that were hard for me to share, were hard for me to kind of reveal, but were so necessary.
04:04And I also just didn't include anything to infantilize my own story to make it seem like
04:09it was this epic tale of hills and valleys just for the sake of excitement or reader. It's all about
04:16being genuine and true to yourself and to the people who need a story like this.
04:20Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. So here we're going to go to you. And your book is now being
04:28developed for film. And one of the things I wanted to ask you, and this is also, you know, about what
04:35black storytelling means, how are you going to keep the book fresh in your mind and in your heart
04:40when you have to now think of it so much differently? You know, writing a script is what,
04:44a hundred pages and you put triple that into this. How do you, how do you maintain your feelings about
04:51the book and the film? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And that's something I definitely
04:56had to navigate, especially when we started writing the show, because I was a part of the
05:01writer's room, which was an amazing experience. But throughout like my entire book journey before
05:07that, the book came out in 2021. And the book follows very quickly, two black women who work in a very
05:14white workplace and publishing. And that was my experience. So I was in a lot of ways putting my
05:20literal experiences into my main character, which is sometimes not that healthy. And I had to really,
05:26you know, step out of that character once the show happened, because it's like, okay, this was my
05:33journey for the book. This is like, we're talking about this earlier, this is like my child. But now I
05:38see the show as like the teenage version of the child. And I'm just like, go, go out into the world.
05:43And so, you know, being able to separate myself from the character that really was like a
05:48therapeutic character for me to write of dealing with, you know, just being the only black person
05:52in any space. But also having a team that I trusted and loved of writers who, you know, all came to the
06:01story with their own experiences of being the only that sort of, you know, and growing up here and
06:05there and all of us working together and feeling comfortable and safe was like, the way that helped.
06:11And I had to speak up about that, though. Like, I didn't walk into it and just get that. Like,
06:18I definitely had to speak up. And that's another thing that I learned during this journey.
06:23I have to follow up on that with something that just came to mind. When you talk about being in
06:27a writer's room, were you the only black girl?
06:29No. No. In the writer's room.
06:31And that was the other thing. Like, when I was saying being safe, like, feeling safe, I had that
06:36because we're able to just, again, the first few weeks were just, you know, when is a time when
06:42you've had an issue at work, right? Because this book is also about workplace dynamics. And when you
06:46see another black person in the room and it's like, are we going to be friends? Like, most of the time,
06:51I hope so. But that's not what happens all the time. So really being able to have those
06:57conversations early on, and it was mostly black women in the room, which was, is so rare.
07:02Very rare.
07:03And it shouldn't be. And I hope that this shows us that we can keep doing that. Please.
07:09Russ, I'm actually going to come back to you first, and then we're going to go over,
07:12because we're talking about that balance of film and television. Gabrielle Union has optioned your book.
07:16I'm very excited about that. I love that for you. But how are you going to maintain, you know,
07:23this, you know, the other black girls, it's fiction, you know, but this is your real life with real
07:28people. So here we are again, the same way you had to do with the book, you're going to have to do now.
07:34Have y'all already had those discussions?
07:36We've talked about it. And it is, though it is based off my life, it is kind of similar. Like,
07:41these characters are still in some form characters. And there are things that happened to me
07:47where I have an opportunity now to show a different side of that, whether it is the response that I
07:52wish I would have gotten, or an experience that I didn't share that now this character can share on
07:57screen, to see the world in a way that maybe isn't the world we have right now, but the world we want
08:01to see, or even the opposite of that, the world that we have, and no one's talking about, and to finally
08:07shed light to that. So, you know, I see it as a vehicle for this story. I see it as a different medium
08:12for the story, and hopefully it'll reach different people in a different way. Gabrielle
08:15Ewing also came up with the idea to make it a comedy. And anyone that reads my book, The Yards
08:20Between Us, it doesn't scream comedy. You know, you talk about the experience of life,
08:26and there's a lot of hardship, there's a lot of success. But when we sit down and we have
08:30discussions, especially as black people watching TV or watching something that's supposed to be
08:34entertaining, I think a good way for us to have conversations maybe we weren't having before
08:38is with comedy, is to disarm these very heated, passionate topics with a laugh and a joke,
08:43and characters that you see wholeheartedly and you're excited to see come back on screen,
08:47regardless of their identities or their jobs or professions. And comedy was the best,
08:51I think, vehicle for us to have this discussion in a way that doesn't re-traumatize people,
08:55in a way that doesn't infantilize our struggles, in a way that doesn't make us these one-dimensional
09:00characters always kind of like fighting a fight, but to show us as full human beings enjoying each other's
09:05company. Okay, so I love that. And Marissa, that actually kind of ties into one of my next question
09:13for you. When we're talking about recipes and recipe book and culture and health, what are,
09:20people don't really, I've worked on cookbooks before, and I look at the cover and it's beautiful
09:26and you got the, everything's laid out. It doesn't always make us think of the intimacy behind preparing
09:32food, preparing recipes, thinking about our health. How do you make sure that even though we have
09:37beautiful glossy covers and beautiful test kitchens and all that great stuff, that we're not forgetting
09:43the history of the things we're making? Yeah, sure. So remember that food is more than just
09:49nourishment. It's also nostalgia. It's thinking about, you know, the stories that you have from when
09:54your grandmother prepared something. And all of that goes into nourishing our minds and our bodies,
09:58right? So, you know, even though this does look really perfect, the book is actually a lot about
10:04being flexible and doing what makes you feel good and really focusing on what works for you. So
10:13perfection is nowhere to be found when it comes to food, unless it's the thing that makes you feel
10:19good in terms of it being perfect. Yeah. And I have a follow-up for that as well. I met a chef
10:25recently and we were talking about different recipes and I told him how my father from Texas
10:30and a great cook, one day I walked in the kitchen to see what he was making. He was making collard
10:34greens. Like, okay, great. About to have some collard greens. And I saw him take a stick of butter
10:38and put it in a pot and take another stick of butter and put it in a pot. And I almost passed out.
10:42I was like, two sticks of butter goes into a, I never knew. Like, I don't watch, you know,
10:47what he's putting in there. And I'm like, this is terrible. We got to fix this. We got to use this
10:51or this or this. So I'm telling the chef this and he's like, do you eat the whole pot when he makes it?
10:58And I'm like, no, you have a couple forkfuls, a normal, it's fine. And he said, our foods are starting
11:05to become weaponized. Like shouldn't be eating this and you shouldn't be eating this and you shouldn't
11:10and you shouldn't. You can have a bit of anything. There's no bad foods. What do you say to that?
11:16I 100% agree with that. And that was a huge part of the inspiration for this book. So I have been
11:22vegan. I have been vegetarian, but I grew up in South Carolina where, right, that is not a thing. And
11:29when I was doing vegan and vegetarianism, like it wasn't really wasn't a thing. But when I go home,
11:36you know, if I want to have collard greens, I'm going to have them, whether they're prepared with
11:39ham hocks or fat bag. So it's not about trying to change everything. And like you said, there is a
11:46huge sort of weaponization of black foods in particular, saying that our food causes us to
11:52have high blood pressure, causes us to have all these things. That's not necessarily the case.
11:56We have to really look at the entire environment. We have to look at all of those, you know, food
12:01deserts and social determinants of health that are actually kind of driving that. And it's not our food.
12:06The fact is, our food is actually pretty healthy. Collard greens, sweet potatoes, okra,
12:13watermelon, you know, all those things are very healthy. And we have to celebrate that.
12:17Yeah, I love it. I have one more question. Just because you just said watermelon.
12:23Because it's so good right now.
12:24It is.
12:25But there's also that weaponization of that. And it makes some of us, depending on your age
12:30group, I guess, feel a way. So there's an apartment building near my house where I have some friends
12:35who live there. I go over and there's a big sign saying, on the 4th of July, come through in the
12:41lobby. We're going to have this, we're going to have this, and we're going to have a watermelon eating
12:44contest. And I was like, they're going to have a what now?
12:48You're going to have a watermelon eating contest. For context, this is a building that probably has
12:55three black people out of 300. So my daughters were like, ooh, watermelon eating contest. We're
13:01going to go, right? And I'm like, oh my god, no, we're not. There's no watermelon eating here,
13:07unless we're at home. But it dawns on me, they're 16 and 10. It dawns on me like, wow, y'all really
13:13don't, you don't have that baggage. Am I going to give it to them? Am I going to tell them we
13:19don't do that? Because back in the day, XYZ, and we don't want black people to be, do I give them
13:25that or do I not? We're not doing the contest, but I'm just wondering like, do I want to pass that
13:31food weaponization to them? Yeah, and that is really a difficult thing, right? And I don't know how
13:37to answer that. But one thing that we can do is look at the stories behind watermelon and
13:43why it is associated with us in the first place. There's stories about how women made money as
13:47entrepreneurs selling fried chicken, selling watermelon, right? And we can celebrate those
13:52stories, not the ones that have been, you know, put upon us. Right, right. Which I did do. We had a
13:58little watermelon lesson, but it did not say to them, we shouldn't do this on the Fourth of July.
14:04It said, oh, okay, we get this, but we still want to do that, which is not going to happen.
14:09But it's just interesting to see how we're still, some parts of us, we're still weaponizing it
14:16ourselves. Absolutely. Ourselves. Okay, so Russ, I should take a minute to say just, you know,
14:22so we're all on the same page. I was actually Russ's editor on his book, and so I am, you know,
14:28super familiar with it. And there were two points in the book as I was editing it that I had to take a
14:37step back and get myself together and shed a few tears and then come back. Were there moments
14:44like that for you as you were writing them? Definitely. I mean, most of the book was like
14:50that for me. Even the joyous parts, because, you know, to look at your life from kind of this
14:56outside perspective and to see how one part effected another part and vice versa is so kind of surreal,
15:05but also very therapeutic and cathartic in a lot of ways. My story specifically, you know,
15:11when I came out in 2019 as the first bisexual NFL player, that was an amazing moment. It was a
15:17celebration for me and my family and those around me, but it also started such discussion and discourse
15:22within sports world, within, you know, the LGBTQ plus space, black spaces. And it was, to me,
15:30a positive thing to have these discussions happen because my whole time growing up, I didn't see
15:34them happening. I didn't see these intersections crossing, but also coming out is just a moment.
15:39It was one part and one point of my life and so many things had led me to that point.
15:44So when I wrote the book, I wanted to kind of give, give ode to that, to the people that uplifted me to
15:48get to that point, to the obstacles that I faced, both internally and externally. And I think a lot of
15:53people would be surprised to see that the book starts with a very human thing, not something so specific as
15:58being a black bisexual football player, but something so human as grief. I lost a father
16:03very young and it really did set up the stage for how I not only walked through life, but how I was
16:09seen, the spaces I was put in, viewed as a black man when I was really just a 10 year old boy, you
16:16know, all of these things. So I wanted to start there because regardless of the intersections and
16:19whether you see yourself directly in my book, there's so much empathy we can create around these moments,
16:24these very human moments that unfortunately we all experience in the celebrations that we all
16:28experience as well.
16:29Absolutely. Do you want to know one of the moments that made me cry?
16:32Yes.
16:32So I'm not going to give it all away because I want you all to read the book, but you know,
16:36you went to a very fancy prep school for a time with mixed results. And the reason why you left
16:44is when I had to close it and just because it was really what you had to go through. How old were you at
16:51that school?
16:52Oh my gosh, I had to have been 14.
16:54Yeah. So what you had to go through as a 14 year old is something we wouldn't want adult men to have
16:59to manage and you did it and you're still here. So that always gives me a little. So speaking of that,
17:06for you, your book is a novel, but it's got some figures in there that are connected to real life
17:14folks. Just a few, just a few, just a few. But I have the same question for you. Are there moments
17:19in there looking back as you're writing it that you really had to say, this is hard. Like I need a
17:25moment.
17:25Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's funny when I was writing it, I know I said I put a lot of me in
17:31the book, but I wasn't really aware how much of me was in it until I started talking to editors,
17:37kind of selling myself the way you have to when you're selling a project and, and really like looking
17:42back at my own time growing up in a very white, uh, suburb of Connecticut, which is where my main
17:48character also grew up in the book. I know I did not. I know my dad still calls me Nella sometimes
17:54like at that point or that point in the book when you did this thing, I was like, no, like,
17:58but I did that to myself in a way. And once I really started digging into my, you know, I was mostly
18:04around white people besides family until I went to high school. And then when I got to high school,
18:09um, public high school, um, everything I've done has been public, but the public high school has been,
18:15was mostly black at the time or a little more than half. I can't quite recall. But I had that
18:21comment of like, get that comment of you talk like a white girl a lot, all the time. Or why are you
18:27trying so hard? Right? Like those kinds of things where I grew up in this space and I was like, I didn't
18:32know I sounded like this until I really got to that point. And so once I found my kind of own
18:39blurty sisterhood, like wonderful group of women at UNC Chapel Hill, shout out to my friend Ari,
18:45who's here. Um, once I found that group of women who were also kind of quirky and, and maybe not
18:51necessarily like the stereotypes that we were seeing, because that's the other thing is I feel like
18:56TV books, everything has gotten, it's not great, but it's a lot better than what it was when I was
19:02younger. And we see that we're not a monolith, right? And so that's being able to be in that space
19:07and feeling that confidence was wonderful. And so that's all, a lot of those things are things that
19:13Nell experienced as well. Um, and I really wanted to, you know, show that experience of how much,
19:20you know, baggage we carry around that we don't even think about, um, until in this case in the
19:26book and in the show, um, when Hazel comes in, um, that's the point when Nella is like,
19:32ah, a black friend. Like I have a black friend at work. Um, so yeah, it was an interesting experience
19:38really unpacking that on the page, but more so again, having these conversations and then going
19:44into the writer's room and not having to really explain that part was also very nice and refreshing
19:49because the, the book junkets one thing like, but the TV world, there's so many just wonderful
19:55minds and thoughtful people who were just able to take that and like, make it into something
20:00beautiful for the show. So I'm really excited. And hopefully, like you were talking about the
20:05younger version of you, like I would have loved to have this of something like this as a young
20:09person. And I'm just really excited for young people to get that, um, in the show and in the book.
20:15Let's talk a little bit about the publishing industry as a whole.
20:18Yes. Um, because I, you know, I kind of know the backstory of a lot of all of your
20:25books and how they came to be and the trials and tribulations and all that stuff. But let's
20:30share as much as we, you know, care to what that process, um, really looks like. Marissa,
20:36if you could just give us one moment or one part of the publishing process that was the most surprising
20:42to you. The most surprising, gosh, you know, I was approached to write this book, um, just based on
20:51what my editor knew about me, um, and just a flexible lifestyle. I would say that the most surprising was
20:58probably the amount of time that it takes. I had heard that writing a book is akin to birthing a baby,
21:05but. Except longer? Longer. I couldn't believe, um, the inputs that went into that first draft. Um,
21:12and as a cookbook writer, that was a whole other process. We did a lot of testing, um, from that
21:18taking photos and the photo shoot. It was just a lot of time that went into it. And even when I thought
21:24I knew, I didn't. Right. Yeah. Russ? The most surprising part. Um, I think for me being kind of an outsider,
21:34to publishing before this, uh, when I was approached by Anscape to do the book, um, you know, I was told
21:43all of the right things. That this was the black vertical and that they were uplifting voices and
21:47in the importance of my story, which was great. But it wasn't until you came where I saw that really
21:51represented inside, um, of publishing. And I understand also, I believe I was in the first
21:57slate of, like, books to come out. Um, so it was very much still kind of in startup mode. But it's so
22:02interesting how the front facing part of it cannot necessarily always match the internal part of it.
22:09And I know, like I said, you coming in was super huge for me, just because I didn't want to have
22:14to explain everything, you know, and I didn't want to have to fight for certain parts of the book,
22:19um, because maybe culturally people didn't understand it. And I felt like before you came,
22:23I did kind of have to do that. Um, I think it's important for all of us to keep sharing our stories
22:27and to keep writing books and to keep making sure that, uh, it's not just lip service, that the black
22:31verticals, um, we are all supporting also our black verticals internally, uh, and they're being,
22:36the people are being supported internally. I think that's why this is so beautiful and us all being
22:40here and, uh, Disney having a hand in bringing me here is so huge because anything that I do,
22:45I don't want my voice to be used, um, or my platform to be used if myself and people like me
22:53in my community are also being shared power. Um, to use me and to share your platform without
22:58sharing your power to me is tokenism and I don't ever want to be a part of something like that.
23:02And I hope that we can just continue to see that shift in publishing.
23:05Me too.
23:06Yes. Amen. Amen to that.
23:08Sakey, what about you?
23:09Oh, this is tricky because I was an editorial assistant for a little while and then I was an
23:14assistant editor and then I was like, I want to write this book. Bye. I hate this. Um,
23:19and I didn't hate it. So, but I did know a lot and knew about the kind of sausage, how it was made,
23:25which helped in some ways, but also I think hurt me in other ways. Um, I will say though that I
23:31think the thing that I learned that surprised me the most had more to do with just like my own
23:36management of myself. Like I, I'm kind of alluded to having to speak up and I have never been in the
23:42driver's seat in any of my careers that I've had in past lives. And so being kind of front
23:48word facing more so than I was used to being, and then also having to like be like, no,
23:52I do want to do this or I don't want to do this. Like just speaking up for myself,
23:56that was something that I didn't know. Looking back at who I was before the book,
24:01I didn't really think about it as much, but now I'm like, oh wow, there are so many times when I
24:05wish I had said something, even especially while I wasn't publishing. And like now I'm like, oh man,
24:10if I could go back and, and go be an editorial assistant and like actually call things out that
24:15I saw, that would be amazing, but I can't. And so I'm just like trying to take that,
24:20this power of like speaking up and again, protecting myself and my time more seriously.
24:26And, and it's hard. Sometimes it's hard. I gotta remind myself, but.
24:30But it's worth it. It's worth it. It's absolutely worth it.
24:33We have time for a couple of questions. If we have, um, folks who would like to ask a question,
24:40maybe, possibly. Is there, is there a hand? Cause I can't see it. It's so bright. It's very bright.
24:51First of all, congratulations to everybody. I'm looking forward to reading your books.
24:56My name is Carol Davis and I'm writing a book. I want to know how does someone such as myself
25:02approach someone, for example, like you? The book is on, it goes back to slavery all the way through
25:08to the president. It's, it's a memoir. And it's just really the story of answering the question,
25:13why don't black people have the generational wealth that they should? And all of the things
25:18that go into, you know, and it's a really, it's an inspiring story, but it's also the truth.
25:24And so I'm wondering how do, how does someone like me approach someone like you?
25:29That's a great question. Yeah. Um, and I'm going to answer that in a way that hopefully it can be
25:35helpful, even if that's not your, necessarily your book, but for anyone in this process. Um,
25:40although I have to say that is a, that's, there's something there for sure. So, um, at Disney
25:46Publishing Worldwide, there are lots of different imprints and I work at Anscape where Russ is one of
25:51my authors and it would start with having an agent. Um, we're not, I'm not allowed to accept
25:58unagented manuscripts. I'll talk a writer through anything, but the first thing you would have to
26:03do is get an agent who would then query me. So the first part is the hardest part, which is what,
26:11which agent is going to rep. You guys, all of you have really amazing agents. Um, that's the first part
26:17for, for, on our end. Um, let's, let's wrap it up. That was a great question to have. Um,
26:25I am so proud of all three of you. I promise I'm not going to get all we be. Um, but when I was asked
26:31to come to Disney to start up Anscape, this is what I envisioned. This is what I hoped could happen.
26:37Um, that we could have events like this and we can have all kinds of fun things going on and we can have
26:44book giveaways. Did I say that? Did I say book giveaways? Did I say and you get a book and you
26:51get a book and you get a book? Yes. You will all be leaving here with a book and after you get your
27:00book, you can step right across the hall and get it signed as well. So thank you all for coming out.
27:08Thank you all for being here. That was amazing. And, um, we'll look forward to seeing you across the
27:13the hall very soon. Thank you.
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