Alison C. Rollins and Latria Graham in Conversation

Poet Alison C. Rollins recently finished her first outdoor survival training program. Part of her preparation was to read Latria Graham’s essays about the experience of being a Black woman in the outdoors. Graham is a journalist and fifth-generation farmer living in South Carolina. In “Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream,” published in Outside Magazine, Graham describes a moment when—right before leaving for the Great Smoky Mountains—her mother handed her the gun of her late father for protection. Rollins had a very similar experience. Her mother’s first question, when hearing of her daughter's desire to journey into the outdoors, was, “How are you going to protect yourself?” This moment of recognition led Rollins and Graham together, to talk about writing, survival, and, as Rollins calls it, “Black nature joy.”