Rion Amilcar Scott: ‘It Has to Be Fun, It Has to Be Funky’

Deesha and Dawnie chat with Rion Amilcar Scott, sharing stories, craft advice, 90’s hip-hop references, and how experience as parents, as teachers, and as lovers of music can inform the writing process. 

They discuss their reactions to elements of their work playing out in real life, and call for not forgetting the joys and humor of the Black experience that coincides with the tragedies. Rion talks about his generative and drafting process—his beginnings and endings, the structure and limitations of flash and short fiction, the revision process, and his playfulness and improvisation as an approach to the work. 

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Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned

• The World Doesn’t Require You (Rion Amilcar Scott)
• Insurrections (Rion Amilcar Scott)
• August Wilson
• “The N****r Knockers” (Rion Amilcar Scott, Tyrant Books, 2017)
• “Percy And The Fire Plums” (Rion Amilcar Scott, McSweeney’s 64: The Audio Issue)
• Heavy (Kiese Laymon)
• The Sellout (Paul Beatty)
• Percival Everett
• Mark Twain
• Heads of the Colored People (Nafissa Thompson-Spires)
• Walking on Cowrie Shells (Nana Nkweti)
• “David Sherman, The Last Son of God” (Rion Amilcar Scott, Midnight Breakfast, Issue 8)
• Eugenia Tsutsumi
• Rising of a Legend (Review by Jessica Sequeira, berfrois, 2016)
• “Special Topics in Loneliness Studies” (Story from The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott)
• “A Loudness of Screechers” (Rion Amilcar Scott, Barrelhouse)
• Edward P. Jones
• Ernest Hemingway
• “Klan” (Story from Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott)
• Poets and Writers
• To Sir, With Love (E.R. Braithwaite)
• Between The World And Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
• Night of the Living Rez (Morgan Talty)
• Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (Hanif Abdurraqib)
• Mitchell S. Jackson
• The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
• The Women of Brewster Place (Gloria Naylor)
• Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson)
• Miguel Street (V.S. Naipaul)
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (ZZ Packer)
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Danielle Evans)
• Sula (Toni Morrison)

Listening List:

• “Foe Life” (Mack 10)
• Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (Outkast)
• “One More Chance” (The Notorious B.I.G.)
• “Triumph” (Wu-Tang Clan ft. Cappadonna; special shoutout to Inspectah Deck’s opening verse)
• “The End” (The Doors)
• “Riders on the Storm” (The Doors)
• “Winter Warz” (Wu-Tang Clan; special shoutout to Cappadonna’s verse)
• A Tribe Called Quest
• “Straight Outta Compton” (N.W.A.)
• Rakim
• GZA
• Chuck D
• Andre 3000
• “Name Callin’ Pt. 1” (Queen Latifah)
• “Talk to Me” (Foxy Brown)
• E-40
• Kendrick Lamar
• Books Are Pop Culture (Reggie Bailey and Akili Nzuri)

More from Deesha and Dawnie:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

Produced by Ursa Story Company 

Hosted by Deesha Philyaw & Dawnie Walton

Executive Producers: Dawnie Walton, Deesha Philyaw, Mark Armstrong

Associate Producer: Marina Leigh

Episode Editor: Kelly Araja

Author Bio:

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collections The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, among other publications.

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