Writers & Storytellers Make the World and Form its Memory

We’re still telling stories, but we've taken a new look at them. This week, we're thrilled to present another new-to-community champion, multi-hyphenate Antonia Hylton. Look for her on-air reporting, or listen to her pods Southlake, or Grapevine.

Antonia’s Life@GWN?

In the words of her colleague and friend, Al Roker, Antonia Hylton “exemplifies the Girls Write Now message — if you can write, you can do anything. About Girls Write Now, Antonia said, “It’s the organization that I wished I’d had when I was younger, a community of people dedicated to young women’s futures, helping them formulate and strengthen their voice.

What’s Your job??

Journalist, author, and podcaster, Antonia has been writing and telling stories her entire life. In college, the investigative research she began on race, mass incarceration, and psychiatry became the subject of her New York Times bestselling book, MADNESS, Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, published by Legacy Lit, a Hachette Book Group. She’s also a Peabody and Emmy Award winner.

What’s Your Experience with Mentoring?

Growing up one of seven siblings, Antonia considered her family her first mentors, including Aunt Soledad O’Brien. Her advice is to find people, ask people directly, and to curate those people on your journey. It is so important.

A Favorite Childhood Read?

The Search for Delicious, by Natalie Babbitt. One of the first books she remembers reading independently and loving enough to read 10 or 11 times, for the way it tackled serious global issues, like war, to children. She still remembers the lessons of empathy it taught.

Why is Your Work Important?

Our world is changing very quickly. Having recently returned from covering the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and seeing not only the storm's devastation but also the impact of misinformation and disinformation, I listened to and told people’s stories. We haven’t lost the battle yet. Telling the truth, writing down what you know, witnessing and recording other’s stories, these are sacred and powerful acts.

Writers and storytellers make the world and form its memory. Our words are the calm and the clarity when the storms come.