Ishion Hutchinson will play a mash up of Jamaican music—ska, rocksteady, reggae and especially 1970s dub. Cooking up a dancing elixir, other genres will also be played. The session will be interspersed with performance of original dub poetry and a screening of a short film. Guest DJ appearance by Jonah Mixon-Webster.
Iconic local restaurant Sandra’s Next Generation will also be serving up a soul food feast!
Niel Gray Jr. Professor of English Langdon Hammer talks with poet Zaffar Kunial about the sources of his poetry, from song lyrics to family histories to his undying love for the sport of English cricket.
From the Windrush Generation in the United Kingdom to the Great Migration in the United States, the story of migration and its effect on families and culture was as significant a story in the last century as it is in this one. Alicia Schmidt Camacho engages four “children” of migrations about how this story has impacted their lives and their work.
Tsitsi Dangarembga and Assistant Professor of English and Humanities Ernest Mitchell discuss the hundreds of black and white photographs Richard Wright took in 1953 during a ten-week visit to West Africa to research his book Black Power (1954), an account of the Gold Coast’s transition to the independent nation of Ghana.
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu talks with Professor of English Stephanie Newell about the ways her life and fiction engage with the seismic cultural changes that have taken place in Zimbabwe since the 1970s.
Two of today’s most innovative fiction writers—André Alexis and Laird Hunt—discuss fiction, fable, and form in this wide-ranging discussion on the art of writing.
Margo Jefferson spent most of her brilliant career as a critic for major magazines and newspapers before transitioning into writing that combines her critical acumen with personal narrative in thrilling ways. In this talk and conversation with Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music, Margo discusses how the personal is an essential element of the critical, and vice-versa.
Start your festival day with free coffee and treats, book and tote bag giveaways, and a short reading by poet Jonah Mixon-Webster.
Prize-winning theater artist Sharon Bridgforth will pull cards from her dat Black Mermaid Man Lady Oracle Deck and dem Blessings Deck. Based on the cards, she and moderator Shamain McAllister will offer questions and conversation for our journey. You are invited to engage, connect, celebrate, and be witnessed. “I always ask, what does Infinite Love want us to Know?”
Aleshea Harris’s plays, according to Vinson Cunningham, make theater new by “reaching back to its old, mysterious, ceremonial roots.” Aleshea talks about the ceremony of theater with 2013 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient Tarell Alvin McCraney.
