Writer Raina León joins the GrottoPod this week as part of our summer reading series to share her piece “Solstice in Solidified Sugar.” León is a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn and sombra: dis(locate), and the chapbooks profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self.