J Wortham is a sound healer, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, author of a forthcoming nonfiction collection “Work of Body,” and a 2025 Rabkin Prize winner. You can read their full bio here. 

We invited J to have a conversation about their work. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of J in their home office in New York featuring an art piece by Alisha B Wormsley.

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity. 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Black Futures edited by J Wortham and curator Kimberly Drew (One World, January 2020)

• Still Processing podcast

• “In Defense of the Traditional Review” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker, July 2025)

• “For ‘Purpose’ Cast, Navigating Revisions Became a ‘Juggling Act’ ” by Salamishah Tillet (The New York Times, June 2025)

• TikTok Queer Ultimatum Season 2 reviewby J Wortham

• Channeling by J Wortham

• Rebecca Solnit

• Hilton Als’ Instagram account

• Hanif Abdurraqib’s Instagram account

• Sculptor Simone Leigh

• Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2023)

• “ ‘I will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk” by J Wortham (The New York Times Magazine, May 2024)  

• “The Artist Upending Photography’s Brutal Racial History” by J Wortham (The New York Times Magazine, May 2021)

• “The Lives They Led: Wafa Al-Udaini” by J Wortham (The New York Times Magazine, 2024)

• Stars and Stars with Isa podcast

• Writer Colleen Kinder

• Dear Lord, Make me Beautiful by Kyle Abraham

• Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum (2024)

• ha ha ha ha ha ha ha by Julia Masli

• Black Quantum Futurism books

• The Lightning Field by Walter D. Maria

• Roden Crater by James Turrell

• The Star Axis by Charles Ross

• Storm King Wavefield by Maya Lin

• Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt

• Native American mounds in Madison and Dane County, Wis.

• Jupiter Magazine

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the eExecutive dDirector of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews also includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer;  Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copyediting by Katie Avila Loughmiller and Karen Samelson. Music is by Flint, HaHaHa, Ben Hendler, and Loya. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.