In her debut novel, Dear Martin, writer Nic Stone told the story of a high school student who starts writing letters to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after an encounter with racist police officers.
At first blush, you’d think she was writing from the perspective of someone who’s only had bad experiences with law enforcement, but that’s not true.
Stone is the daughter of a police officer.
In the audio above, she tells Houston Matters producer Michael Hagerty about her views on law enforcement, how those views have changed over the years, and about the kinds of media she wishes were available when she was growing up.
She also talks about her upcoming novel, Jackpot, which is about a young African-American woman who sells a lottery ticket she’d bought, which turns out to be a winner. To get it back, she has to enlist the help of someone from a very different walk of life.
Stone is coming to Houston to give a back-to-school lecture at the University of Houston on Friday, Aug. 16. She says she plans to talk about the importance of failure in finding your calling. She, herself, dropped out of college twice before eventually finishing and becoming a writer.