Photos from the 2010 National Black Writers Conference
The Center for Black Literature is having our first Fundraising Drive!
Dates: December 15, 2011 – January 31, 2012
Goal: $15,000
Learn how to contribute TODAY!
In the Media, Announcements & Events
The Killens Review of Arts & Letters
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Killens Review of Arts & Letters journal, which is published twice a year by the Center for Black Literature (CBL), is dedicated to supporting the mission and work of the late John Oliver Killens, the visionary for the National Black Writers Conference. Through the Killens Review of Arts & Letters, writers have opportunities to create and expand the canon of literature produced by writers of color. The journal includes essays, fiction, art, poetry, and interviews by established authors, emerging writers, poets and artists, educators and students.
John Oliver Killens, author, activist, social critic, educator and former writer-in-residence at Medgar Evers College, spent decades writing and working to support Black writers and their work. It is important that CBL continues to provide and remind the general public, students, faculty, and those in the literary and publishing communities about the significance of the broad range of works produced by Black writers.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
To submit original work, please send a paginated word document that includes the title of work, the author’s name and contact information to writers@mec.cuny.edu. Please CC CBL.writers@gmail.com All submissions are peer reviewed by an editorial team. We kindly ask that you be patient with our responses.
THE CENTER FOR BLACK LITERATURE
Founded in 2003 and spearheaded by Dr. Brenda M. Greene, the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, was established to expand, broaden, and enrich the general public’s knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of the value of black literature; to continue the tradition and legacy of the National Black Writers Conference; to serve as a voice, mecca, and resource for Black writers; and to study the literature of people from the African Diaspora. It is the only Center devoted to this in the country.
SAVE THE DATE!
The Eleventh National Black Writers Conference
March 29 – April 1, 2012,
"The Impact of Migration, Popular Culture
and the Natural Environment in the
Literature of Black Writers"
Funding provided by: National Endowment for the Arts & New
York Council of the Humanities
Media support provided by: African American Literature Book Club, AKILA Worksongs, Inc.
2012 NBWC Awardees
Ishmael Reed – John Oliver Killens Lifetime Achievement Award
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – W. E. B. Du Bois Award
Dr. Howard Dodson – Ida B. Wells Institution Building Award
Nikki Giovanni - Gwendolyn Brooks Award
For a full description of the 2012 National Black Writers Conference, Program, Registration, and Sponsors please visit: http://www.nationalblackwritersconference.org/home.html
Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of
Zora Neale Hurston’s
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Celebrate this seminal work from the American literary canon with live theater, conversations and more this season from The Greene Space.
FRI FEB 24 AT 7 PM
I, Too, Sing America: Langston And Zora’s Unsung Collaboration
Host Terrance McKnight explores the music of the era through the lens of Langston Hughes and his close and controversial relationship with Zora Neale Hurston.
WED FEB 29 AND THU MAR 1 AT 7 PM
Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Radio Drama
Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Starring Phylicia Rashad, Chuck Cooper, Brandon Dirdon, Leslie Uggams and others. Radio drama adapted by Arthur Yorinks.
WED MAR 14 AT 6 PM
A Literary Salon
Mix and mingle and enjoy readings from Their Eyes Were Watching God by poet and actor Carl Hancock Rux.
WED MAR 28 AT 7 PM
Women Writers on the Horizon
A conversation with Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez and Ruby Dee, moderated by Zora Neale Hurston’s niece, Lucy Anne Hurston.
The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space
44 Charlton Street in SoHo
Tickets and information at thegreenespace.org
Read this issue of Neworld Review featuring the article “Haki Madhubuti:
A Tradition of Liberation Narratives” by Brenda M. Greene.
“if poetry is to have meaning
it must mean something
more than metaphor and simile
more than tree-talk and looking for gigs
more than competition in unrhymed free verse
serious to the bone of incomprehension
surely to land the poet
a guggenheim or macarthur genius grant.”
...Read More
Also read:
I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I’m Not and Other Plays
by Brenda M Greene
There are few writers alive who have created a body of work that both teaches and celebrates life, even at its darkest moments.” Haki Madhubuti, “Sonia Sanchez, The Bringer of Memories”
At the Split the Rock Celebration of Langston Hughes, sponsored by the Association of Writing Conference in Washington DC, Sarah Browning, poet and Director of Split This Rock and DC Poets Against the War, introduced Sonia Sanchez as “a mighty, mighty poet.” These words symbolize the persona of Sonia Sanchez, a woman who is a mighty poet, playwright, teacher and literary activist and who over the last five decades has provided generations of writers, Read More
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________________________________________
For information about the CBL contact:
Dr. Brenda M. Greene, Executive Director
Center for Black Literature
bgreene@mec.cuny.edu