Welcome to the 2024 Home, Talk, Taste Anthology — Audio Version! Click on each story below to hear the writers tell their stories in their own words. These works were developed through writing sessions held at the Roxbury and South End Boston Public Library branches where GrubStreet partnered with the Boston Public Library to host a series of community writing programs as part of an ongoing partnership that started in 2016 and continues today. These stories were featured in a printed anthology in 2023, edited by community fellows Angie Chatman and Theresa Okokon, and with the launch of GrubStreet’s new podcast studio, we are able to bring you this audio version as well.

Maya Balle

Maya's writing is devoted to all of those who know the ravishes and joys of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Eccentric women over 80, oddball family members and a pollinator garden that hummingbirds and butterflies love capture Reverend Maya Balle. This cast of characters give inspiration to flash fiction, wedding ceremonies, celebrations of life and intimate moments with those who want to share their secrets before they die. In her beloved South End Boston home she gave birth to four businesses, raised five adopted children, married the same man twice and will forever be grateful to these brave women.

Listen to "Stealing Home" here.

Mattie Deed

Listen to "Deed's Homemade Southern Rolls" here.

Paula R. Elliott

Paula R. Elliott sings, writes, and tells stories. Her family’s legacy of Black teachers’ inspired her work in higher education. Always an eager listener, she began writing about Black educators. In 2018, following her muse as a Futuro Media Group fellow, she developed a podcast featuring students and teachers’ responses to Boston Public School closings. She credits Write Down the Street workshops enriching and developing her narrative writing practice. Also GrubStreet’s BPL workshops, the Mission Hill Women’s Writing Group and the EWG support group. Extending her classical music training she sings jazz, spirituals, music grounded in African American vocal traditions.

Listen to "What Is It About Watermelon?" here.

Erin Lenzing

Erin is an East Boston resident who has been to 26 countries on 6 continents and liked them all except Switzerland. You know what you did, Switzerland.

Listen to "Swear Words" here.

Fiona Elle Maurissette

Fiona Maurissette is a Haitian-American writer of creative nonfiction.

Listen to "In Kreyol" here.

Joan Seamster

Joan Seamster is new to writing and loves the people, places, and opportunities that come with it. She has lived in Roxbury for the past decade and treasures the sense of community that living here has brought her.

Listen to "My First Recipe" here.

Lee Santos Silva

Lee is a professor in the English Department at Bunker Hill Community College. As a first-generation American, his writing explores Cape Verdean lives and experiences in the United States, in Cape Verde, and in Portugal. He is currently at work on a memoir about his experience as an LGBTQ Cape Verdean navigating race and sexual identity while living in Lisbon. When he's not writing, you can find him balancing on his hands or back bending at Boston's local circus schools.

Listen to "Fishes and Loaves" here.