Haili Blassingame

They don't have the words to write, but they must write in order to find the words.

That's why you have to write it, to learn what it is.

You set it on the page.

You set it free.

You set yourself and others free, too.

Miss Janine Ford, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Robert.

When the interview went dark, I rushed online to buy her debut novel.

It was out of print.

I couldn't even find it secondhand.

The shimmering pink hope I'd had adopted a gray cast, like ruined footage that couldn't be restored.

It was like she never sat down to write the book at all.

Yeah, I mean, I was also I was thinking about during the pandemic, a lot of old videos of writers like James Baldwin were resurfacing.

And I think it was actually his also his sort of conversation with Nikki Giovanni, which is a lot about gender.

And so I was thinking about these old 70s, you know, these like glamorous writers who are very profound, but they were coming back up because of the moment.

And so I was thinking, okay, like she would, you know, could easily probably find this clip.

She's, this is her professor and sort of, I love playing with medium and the different mediums that exist.

Obviously we have text news notifications and YouTube, which is like, I think I don't, I'm going to butcher this, but I think the most watched streaming platform ever is YouTube.

And so I think the way I was thinking about this was also seeing Janine at a

you know, almost cat's age, not exactly, but young.