Many in the USA regard slavery and the Jim Crow laws – 250 years of brutal discrimination – as primarily African-American rather than white history. Does the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM) reflect the failure to treat this story as a national trauma? Can BLM change the USA? And how do the issues it raises find expression in literature today?

One anti-racism activist who defends BLM is US young adult author Jason Reynolds. His million-selling books deal with the daily lives of young black Americans and depict police violence and killings. Reynolds writes rap-inspired books and wants to get boys to read and to provide black Americans with literary role models. Can literature change the USA? Reynolds talks with Nazneen Khan-Østrem about the toxicity of racism and why he believes BLM matters.

LitFestBergen 2021: Racism's heart

Jason Reynolds—award-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature—discusses his prolific writing career that inspires young readers to discover their own stories.

Best of Design Matters: Jason Reynolds

Design Matters by Debbie Millman features interviews with designers, artists and cultural leaders, including Lawrence Weiner, Barbara Kruger, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Kandel, Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Michael Arad, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Paula Scher, Steven Heller, Jonah Lehrer, among others.

In 2011, Design Matters received the People’s Design Award from the prestigious Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards.

Subscribe to Design Matters for free on iTunes, where new episodes are uploaded weekly: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Five days of non-fiction and fiction from the whole world. 

The annual Bergen International Literary Festival for non-fiction and fiction (LitFestBergen), staged for the first time in 2019, presents international and Norwegian literature. 

By showcasing high-quality non-fiction and fiction from across the globe, this event aims to increase understanding of our world and humanity's place in it. 

LitFestBergen is characterised by literary, linguistic, cultural and geographic diversity. It seeks to be bold and innovative, while being simultaneously accessible to a broad audience. 

Festival participants meet authors from the whole world and from Norway, and acquire insights into literary works which directly address the big and important questions of concern to us all.

New tracks tagged #jason reynolds