Join us on Thursday, November 19th at 6pm EST for the second installment of our monthly speaker series, “Advancing Antiracism Through Literature.” This monthly panel discussion/lecture series is an exploration of the use of literature to dismantle racist ideology and attempt to heal a troubled world. The series explores, in particular, what it means for people to practice antiracism beyond a book club experience, to learn, educate, activate and dismantle systemic racism.
November’s Theme: Social Transformation Through Community
Description: A conversation on how to leverage literature as a foundation for creativity and community.
Moderator: Tre Johnson
Tre Johnson is a freelance writer on race and culture and a longtime career educator. His freelance career as a cultural critic and essayist has included appearances on CNN Tonight w/ Don Lemon; CBS This Morning; PBS NewsHour and NPR Morning Edition. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, New York Times, Vox, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post and several other outlets. He's served on panels for the NY TV Festival, Black Star Film Festival and others, speaking on race, popular culture, identity. He's also given keynote addresses and lectures at University of Pennsylvania, St. Mary's College of Southern Maryland, and Lewis & Clark College. Tre is a graduate from the University of Maryland, proudly born and raised in Trenton, NJ and currently lives in Philadelphia, PA.
Speakers:
Mark Nowak
Mark Nowak is a writer and founding director of Work Writers School, which links the global working class to literary practice. He is author of three poetry collections: Revenants, Shut Up Shut Down, and Coal Mountain Elementary. Revenants was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Shut Up Shut Down became a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. He is also the writer of one prose work, Social Poetics, part autobiography, party literary criticism, part political theory. Nowak has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations as well as the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism from Split This Rock. As founding director of the Worker Writers School (WWS), Nowak has been designing and facilitating projects to link working class communities to literary practice and poetry workshops in North America, Central America, Europe, and Africa for the past two decades. Articles on the WWS have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times, New Yorker, Poetry Foundation (“Poem Talk” podcast), Laura Flanders Show, and elsewhere.
Kaitlyn Greenidge
Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel is “We Love You, Charlie Freeman” (Algonquin Books), one of the New York Times Critics' Top 10 Books of 2016. Her writing has appeared in the Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, Elle.com, Buzzfeed, Transition Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, American Short Fiction and other places. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study other places. She was a contributing editor for LENNY Letter and
is currently a contributing writer for The New York Times. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Date: Thursday, November 19, 6 – 7:15 pm
Theme: Social Transformation Through Community
Date: Wednesday, December 16, 6 – 8 pm
Theme: Advancing Antiracism Through Literature (Recap Panel Discussion)
We sincerely hope that you can join us as we seek to advance antiracism through literature.
At Bookclubz we believe in the limitless power of books and their ability to establish, sustain, shape and inform an individual’s identity through a shared reading experience with others. We recognize the reader as an active component in the meaning making process. We actively seek to foster experiences that transcend the involvement within a book club to the consciousness of a society.