Today we welcome author Clint Smith to The Stacks to talk about his new poetry collection Above Ground, a tribute to being a parent amidst the chaos of life. We discuss how he handled the pressure to follow up the bestselling and award-winning How the Word is Passed. We also get into how parenting has animated all facets of life, and how competition has facilitated Clint’s relationship to literature.

The Stacks Book Club selection for April is Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay. We will discuss the book on April 26th with Clint Smith.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

• Above Ground by Clint Smith
• How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• New York Times 10 best books of 2021
• National Book Award finalists in 2021
• “Ep. 168 Embodying History with Clint Smith” (The Stacks)
• American Whitelash by Wesley Lowry
• Vanessa Mobley
• Little, Brown and Company
• The New York Times
• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
• Ask the Stacks
• A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney
• Grief is Love by Marisa Renee Lee
• “Ep. 228 Grief is Love with Marisa Renee Lee” (The Stacks)
• The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke
• The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams
• “Ep. 64 The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams — The Stacks Book Club (Lori Gottlieb)” (The Stacks)
• The Undying by Anne Boyer
• “Ep. 170 The Undying by Anne Boyer — The Stacks Book Club (Mychal Denzel Smith)” (The Stacks)
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Being Mortal by Atul Gwande
• Final Gifts by Maggie Callahan and Patricia Kelley
• Adele Cries After Former Teacher Surprises Her Onstage
• Arsenal F.C.
• Manchester City F.C.
• Davidson College (Davidson, NC)
• Nuyorican Poets Cafe
• Mahogany L. Browne
• John Keats
• W.B. Yeats
• Walt Whitman
• Robert Frost
• Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989)
• Peloton
• Justin Tinsley
• David Dennis Jr.
• Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
• “Ep. 164 Breaking a Story with Patrick Radden Keefe” (The Stacks)
• Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
• Books are Magic (Brooklyn, NY)
• “Picador pre-empts Akbar’s ‘transcendental’ début” (Katie Fraser, The Bookseller)
• Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
• Evicted by Matthew Desmond
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Imani Perry
• Ace Hardware
• Loyalty Bookstores (Silver Spring, MD)
• Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
• Inciting Joy by Ross Gay (audiobook)
• An Immense World by Ed Yong
• The Movement Made Us by David Dennis Jr. and David Dennis Sr.
• Stephen Curry
• ESPN
• Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David Blight

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