Pastor, award-winning author, and rising civil rights leader Michael W. Waters Stakes Is High, For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World ruminates on the sacred places and spaces he visited as part of a cross-country trek in 2019-2020 through America’s racial history. From reflections on the river’s edge where Emmett Till’s body was recovered and the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and to more recent sites of racial violence like the Charleston chu...

2018 Religion Communicators Council (RCC**) Wilbur Award, Books-Non-Fiction**"Michael W. Waters...is both blunt and lyrical as he meditates on police violence, racism, hip-hop, and the power of faith." —**"**New and Noteworthy," Sojourners, April 2017What happens when a people can take no more injustice rained down upon their sons and daughters? When each new travesty echoes the cries of ancestors killed for the color of their skin? How do...

Time to board the bus! Liberty and her friend Abdullah, with their families and a diverse group of passengers, head off to their first stop: Jackson, Mississippi. Next on their map are Glendora, Memphis, Birmingham, Montgomery, and finally Selma, for a march across the iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge.As told through the innocent view of a child, Liberty's Civil Rights Road Trip serves as an early introduction to places, people, and events that transformed history. The story is...

Winner of the 2020 Goddard Riverside CBC Youth Book Prize for Social JusticeA Top Ten Selection of the 2021 In the Margins Book AwardsA Texas Institute of Letters 2021 Finalist for Best Picture BookA 2021 RCC Wilbur Award WinnerA Picture Book Discovery Prize Winner for the 2020 Writers' League of Texas Book Awards"Dad, what happened?""Why are they shooting?"

Michael Waters identifies as a member of the hip-hop generation living in an urban context. His purpose in writing is to inspire "hope in the promise of a new day, in the assurance of victory over defeat, and in the fulfillment of God's promises within the created order." *Freestyle**boldly confronts issues within the urban community such as addiction, education, incarceration, family issues, and church. It's a prophetic book of essays based on Waters's blogs from The Huffington Post. He g...

"Dad, what happened?""Why are they shooting?"“What is this vigil for?"The shootings keep coming, and so do Jeremiah's questions. Dad doesn't have easy answers, but that doesn’t mean he won’t talk about it—or that he won’t act. But what if Jeremiah doesn’t want to talk anymore? None of it makes sense, and he’s just a kid. Even if he wants to believe in a better world, is there anything he can do about it?Inspired by real-life events, this honest, intim...