A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.
Poet Shauna M. Morgan understands that feeling “weighed down by all of those things happening around us” can make writing even more challenging.
For her, it helps to remember “that generations of my forebears created art in times of abject crises and bore witness to what was happening.”
On episode 53, Shauna shares what she calls the “weight prompt.” It will help you reflect on subjects that feel heavy to you as well as subjects that feel light. Listen below!
This documentary by Lexington nonprofit Black Yarn sold out its August premiere at Lexington’s Lyric Theatre and later sold out the Kentucky Theatre.
Black Yarn President and co-founder Kristen LaRue Bond; co-founders Rona Roberts and Barbara Sutherland; and Director of Research Regina M. Lewis answered our questions about the film and their organization.
What is the mission of Black Yarn?
Black Yarn aims to shine a light on systemic harms, foster equity, and connect Black experiences with those of all Americans through storytelling, research, and collaboration.
Tell us about your documentary, Lexington: Resilience in the Redline.
The film focuses on the history and present impact of residential segregation on Black land and wealth in Lexington, KY, and the potential pathways to a more just future in our community.
The film features more than 20 Lexington residents who weave together policy, history, and personal testimony to show how past decisions continue to shape present-day outcomes and how communities have shown resilience despite those harms.
The documentary is one entry point into a larger body of work that includes community-based research, public education, convenings, and collaborative action.
It helps set shared context for deeper conversations about housing, health, wealth, infrastructure, and belonging.
Can you explain the term redlining?
Redlining is the practice of denying home loans to people in certain neighborhoods based on a number of factors, particularly the race or ethnicity of the residents rather than the qualifications of the individual home buyer or the value of the specific house.
Banks and mortgage companies practiced redlining for many years, but it was really the federal government, through loan programs like the FHA, that created a whole system of discrimination through its notorious redlining maps and appraisers’ manual.
That practice is illegal now, since passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
The government and community members play an important role in making sure the law is followed. While redlining is illegal today, its effects remain deeply embedded in patterns of wealth, health, environment, and access to opportunity.
What actions do you hope viewers will take after seeing the film?
We hope viewers will come to understand that many of the huge disparities in wealth, education, health, and opportunity that we see today have resulted from the intentional housing discrimination and segregation of the past.
We also hope that viewers will join us in efforts to write a more equitable future in Lexington.
Black Yarn is planning community events around research, storytelling, and collaboration and would love for audiences to move toward sustained engagement; whether that’s showing up to community conversations, supporting policy change, funding equitable work, or contributing their skills and resources.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about the documentary or about Black Yarn?
Black Yarn believes that the stories we tell shape the futures we build. Lexington: Resilience in the Redline is an invitation to imagine and co-create a more just and connected future. We see this work as ongoing, collective, and rooted in both truth-telling and hope.
Join Us at the Black History Month Celebration
Saturday, Feb. 21, 12 pm to 2 pm Meeting Room 2
The 2026 Black History Month Celebration will begin with the second annual “Hometown Highlights,” a time for individuals from Jessamine County’s Black community to share historical moments, accomplishments, and other interesting facts about their lives.
In the gallery and Main Library, view:
The Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights
A display of handmade dolls by Laura Coulter
Art by Kaniesha Cannady
Immediately following the reception, join us for the screening of Lexington: Resilience in the Redline by Black Yarn.
Travel the high seas with our picks: a graphic novel horror story about a mermaid-like creature; a lyrical, suspenseful novel about a woman following what might be the Arctic Tern’s final migration; and a YA novel about a young artist who is slowly disconnecting from reality and living a second life aboard a ship in the Mariana Trench.
Prefer to stay on dry land for this prompt? We also offer some brief suggestions for books set on trains and subways.
This graphic novel is set in 1926, when the S.S. Vagabond is hired by a former German U-boat officer to recover gold from a sunken submarine lost during World War I.
From the start, there’s a sense that something isn’t quite right. As tempers flare and trust erodes, the ship’s diver encounters a mermaid-like creature within the wreck, its song calling to him in a way that could doom the entire ship.
This visually stunning book delivers a bleak, maritime horror story that offers something memorable beneath the waves.
Franny Stone wants to follow a flock of Arctic Terns on what might be their final migration from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
She convinces Captain Ennis Malone to take her onboard his fishing boat, one of the last vessels allowed to fish for the disappearing schools of Atlantic herring. The birds, she tells him, will lead him to the fish.
Gradually, the crew learns that Franny is not who she appears to be. In fact, she’s broken parole to make this journey.
Migrations is a character-driven adventure story about people trying desperately to hold onto the things they love—whether animals or people—before they disappear completely.
This young adult novel follows fifteen-year-old Caden Bosch, an artist who is slowly disconnecting from reality and living in two overlapping worlds.
In the “real” world, Caden is a good student and a caring big brother. But as his anxiety and connection to reality weakens, Caden spends more and more time in his second world as a crew member aboard a ship bound for the Mariana Trench.
This second world mirrors Caden’s growing fear that terrible things will happen if he doesn’t perform certain rituals.
Challenger Deep is a moving, imaginative, and important look at mental health from a compassionate perspective.
A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.
While novelist Mary Anna Evans believes that studying writing is “very valuable,” she also advises writers “to go out and live your life.” She says that “all experience is useful” in writing.
And she should know. Mary Anna’s books have drawn on her former engineering career and her interest in archaeology, among other experiences.
Mary Anna’s favorite writing prompt will help writers of all backgrounds and genres explore setting. She’s successfully used it with fiction and nonfiction students and even environmental architecture students. Listen below!
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
Books & Bites Podcast, Ep. 109
We’re kicking off the Winter Books & Bites Bingo reading challenge with audiobooks read by multiple narrators! These multi-voiced productions make audiobooks even more engaging.
Tune into our action-packed choices: a YA dystopian novel, a horror/thriller hybrid, and a sweeping, historical Western.
Up your reading game with the Winter Books & Bites Bingo reading challenge!
A reading challenge is a great way to set reading goals for yourself, discover new authors and genres, and have fun while doing it.
This year, we’re offering four smaller, seasonal bingo cards instead of two. Think of them as the appetizer to your reading life, designed to make you hungry for more books.
So get cozy, find a good book, and read!
How Do I Play?
From now through March 31, 2026, keep track of books you read or listen to by writing the title and author in the matching square. You may pair the prompt with an asterisk with one prompt without an asterisk. For teens and adults.
Complete all 9 squares for a chance to win a $50 Joseph-Beth gift card! You’ll also earn a special Books & Bites bookmark.
During the month of March, turn in your completed card at the Customer Service or Teen Desks, or use the form on our website.
A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.
Poet and educator Dorian Hairston encourages all writers—from his high school students to adults—to make their writing fresh and new.
Dorian believes “if we can just find ways as artists to be interesting… we give ourselves a fighting chance at allowing love to blossom in our lives and surviving whatever we must.”
Keep your writing interesting with help from Dorian’s favorite writing prompts. He uses these exercises in his own work as well as with students. Listen below!
The holidays are a great time to gather family records and interview family members about their lives, as we discussed in an earlier blog post.
You can use that information to improve your search results in the library’s genealogy tools. These online resources can help you go back through the generations so that the next time you get together with relatives, you can unwrap the gift of your shared history.
Learn more about two of our genealogy databases, Fold3 Library Edition and Ancestry Library Edition, below.
What better way to ring out the old year than with some of our favorite books published in 2025? Our picks include a darkly comic adventure story, a YA fantasy-mystery, and a novel that reinvents the werewolf story.
And don’t forget to turn in your bingo card in person or online by December 30, 2025!
