Red Emma’s

Five years ago, in June of 2014, 10 months before the Uprising, D. Watkins was still on the come up, a freelance essay writer grinding towards success. His viral essay "Too Poor for Pop Culture" had dropped earlier in 2014, putting him on the map for a local and national audience for the first time. Red Emma's had the honor to partner with D. on his first print publication, a zine version of this essay and a few others.  At the time, we wrote that "D. Watkins' essays for Salon and elsewhere, chronicling the struggles and hustles of Black Baltimore and his own trajectory from street dealer to creative writer, are no doubt the first shots fired by a major literary talent in the making." Turns out this was a fair assessment. With his third book in five years out, writing in the New York Times, and a high-profile gig as a regular Salon columnist and videomaker, D. is a voice to be reckoned with, and one who has studiously made a point of using his success to lift up new rising voices from Baltimore's streets. To mark the fifth anniversary of his first print publication, D.'s coming to Red Emma's for a conversation with the essential Lisa Snowden-McCray of the Baltimore Beat for a conversation about what's changed, what remains to change, and how his new book We Speak for Ourselves fits into this picture.