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Posts from the ‘Around Town’ Category

Women Writers on the Horizon

On March 28, 2012, I had the opportunity to witness four seminal figures in the arts engage in conversation centered on “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. The talk was facilitated by Zora’s niece Lucy Ann Hurston, and included Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, and Ruby Dee Read more

Brooklyn Moon -For One Night Only

Brooklyn Moon -For One Night Only
by Ron Kavanaugh

Thursday, March 8, 2012 – There’s no going back. The 90s poetry scene, laden with promise, talent, and camaraderie has been displaced by motherhood, mortgages, and tenure. But for a moment, the scene, which was originally centered at Brooklyn Moon Cafe, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and numerous other closet-sized spots with three tables and six chairs, was revisited in the 400-seat Cantor Auditorium at the Brooklyn Museum. As poet Jasiri observed, “I’m feeling straight up George & Weezy in here.” Read more

Down These Mean Streets: A Piri Thomas Celebration

What does it mean to be Black, Puerto Rican, and marginalized, all within your small neighborhood, within your family? In 1967, Piri Thomas’s seminal memoir “Down These Mean Streets” chronicled his life –a young man living a hard life in the streets of El Barrio, Spanish Harlem. The book would go on to become required reading for anyone trying to find a way out, or a way in. Read more

Rebecca Walker and Michaela angela Davis

February 14, 2012 – Rebecca Walker and Image Activist Michaela angela Davis conducted a conversation about Walker’s new anthology Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness. The collection—with essays written by prominent voices and figures such as bell Hooks, Henry Louis Gates, dream Hampton, Staceyann Chin as well as Michaela—explores the origins, aesthetics as well as personal definitions of “black cool.” Read more

Portraits of Women Writers of the African Diaspora

December 1, 2011 – I had the pleasure of attending the opening reception for the important and fabulous exhibition “Her Word As Witness: Portraits of Women Writers of the African Diaspora” Photography by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
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