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.
Sharon Bridgforth talks with Beinecke curator Melissa Barton about their mutual love of Langston Hughes, sharing reactions to selections from Hughes’s papers at Beinecke.
Zaffar Kunial reads from his new book of poems England’s Green and discusses the genesis of the book with Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History, and current chair of the South Asian Studies Council. Free copies to the first fifty guests! Signing to follow.
A collaboration between Portuguese vocalist-composer Sara Serpa and Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma, drawing inspiration from Iduma’s book, A Stranger’s Pose, a unique blend of travelogue, musings and poetry. In a combination of music, text, image, and field recordings collected by Iduma during his travels, Intimate Strangers explores such themes as of movement, home, grief, absence, and desire in what Iduma calls “an atlas of a borderless world.”
Poet and past prize recipient Jonah-Mixon Webster and Lisa Monroe of the Gilder Lehrman Center discuss the ways in which the history of enslavement in the United States continues to haunt the present.
Start your festival day with free coffee and treats, book and tote bag giveaways, and a short reading by poet Ishion Hutchinson.
An evening of staged readings of selected scenes from the work of the 2022 recipients in drama, Sharon Bridgforth and Winsome Pinnock.
After receiving the Windham-Campbell Prize for drama, Kia Corthron published two novels; Abbie Spallen is currently working on her first book. Professor of English, Theater, and Performance Studies, and American Studies, Marc Robinson talks with both writers about leaving their comfort zone to tell stories in a different form.
Tsisti Dangarembga’s three novels have had an enormous impact on women’s writing in Africa and around the world. She’ll discuss all three works in a career-spanning conversation with Courtney J. Martin, the Paul Mellon director of the Yale Center for British Art.
The event will also be livestreamed on the Yale Center for British Art YouTube channel.
