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GBN Giveaway: Three Lucky Readers to Receive Free Copies of "Who We Be: The Colorization of America"

By goodblacknews on November 4, 2014

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Good Black News is getting into the holiday spirit early — by giving away three copies of acclaimed author Jeff Chang‘s latest book, “Who We Be: The Colorization of America.”
In this follow-up to the classic “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation,” which garnered Chang an American Book Award, “Who We Be” remixes comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trayvon Martin into a powerful, unusual, and timely cultural history of the idea of racial progress.
I am currently reading this impressive, comprehensive work (the section on African-American comic strip artist Morrie Turner alone is worth the read) and can’t wait to share more about it once I’m finished, but why wait for a GBN review and recommendation when you can get the book for free right away?
To enter, simply send your name and email address with the subject heading “Who We Be Giveaway” to goodblacknewsgiveaways@yahoo.com by Saturday, November 8.  We will choose three winners at random and announce their names on Monday.
Onward and Upward… and good luck!

Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder/Editor-In-Chief
Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder/Editor-In-Chief

 
 

Toni Morrison’s Papers To Be Housed At Princeton University

By goodblacknews on October 23, 2014
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) — The papers of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison are now part of the permanent library collection of Princeton University.  Princeton made the announcement Friday, shortly before the 83-year-old Morrison took part in a forum at the school where she served on the faculty for 17 years.
The renowned author’s papers contain about 180 linear feet of research materials documenting her life, work and writing methods. They include manuscripts, drafts and proofs of many of Morrison’s novels. Materials for her children’s literature, lyrics, lectures, correspondence and more are also part of the collection.
Additional manuscripts and papers will be added over time, beginning with the manuscript of Morrison’s next novel, which is expected to be published in the spring.
Morrison, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Beloved” in 1988, came to Princeton in 1989 and was a member of the university’s creative writing program until she retired in 2006. In 1994, she founded the Princeton Atelier, bringing together undergraduate students in interdisciplinary collaborations with acclaimed artists and performers.
“Toni Morrison’s place among the giants of American literature is firmly entrenched, and I am overjoyed that we are adding her papers to the Princeton University Library’s collections,” Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said. “We at Princeton are fortunate that (Morrison) brought her brilliant talents as a writer and teacher to our campus 25 years ago, and we are deeply honored to house her papers and to help preserve her inspiring legacy.”
Morrison received an honorary doctorate during the school’s 2013 commencement.
article by via blackamericaweb.com

BOOKS: Marlon James’ New Novel, "A Brief History of Seven Killings"

By goodblacknews on October 1, 2014
Marlon James on a visit to the Bronx, where “A Brief History of Seven Killings” concludes. (Credit: Bryan Derballa for The New York Times)

The novelist Marlon James grew up in Jamaica in the 1970s, which means he has a child’s memories of that politically turbulent and culturally fertile period. But as an adult, he keeps circling around that time and place in his mind, trying to make sense of what he could perceive only dimly then.

Out of that quest comes his third novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” which begins as the optimistic glow of independence is giving way to the harsh realities of Cold War politics and the rise of gangs connected to the country’s two main political parties. From there, things get only worse: Crack cocaine appears and the gangs go international, setting up operations in Miami and New York.

“The idea for this book is the very first I had, even before the other two novels, because I always was interested in writing about the Jamaica I grew up in,” Mr. James said. “I thought it was going to be a short novel, that it was one person’s story. But I was wrong, because history is always shaping everything.”

Publishers Weekly declared that “no book this fall is more impressive than ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings,’ ” which comes out Thursday from Riverhead Books. In a review in The New York Times last week, Michiko Kakutani described Mr. James as a “prodigious talent” who has produced a novel that is “epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over the top, colossal and dizzyingly complex.”

At 43, Mr. James is part of a new generation of Caribbean writers whose main cultural reference, aside from their home countries, is the United States rather than their former colonial power (in Jamaica’s case, Britain). These writers share some of the concerns of American peers like Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat and view the questions of identity and authenticity, which preoccupy older writers like George Lamming and the Nobel laureates Derek Walcott and V. S. Naipaul, as largely settled.

During a recent interview in the Bronx, where “Seven Killings” concludes, Mr. James called himself a “post-postcolonial writer” with a hybrid intellectual background. So while he read Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Henry Fielding in school, he noted, he also listened to Michael Jackson and Grandmaster Flash; a section of the new novel makes repeated references to Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing.”

The plot of “Seven Killings” revolves around the assassination attempt on Bob Marley a few days before he was to give a free concert in Kingston in December 1976, and required the novelist to dig deep into his creative toolbox. Marley, called simply the Singer in the novel, so dominated that period, Mr. James said, that his persona risked overwhelming the novel, which clocks in at just under 700 pages.

“I needed him more to hover over the book, as opposed to being in the middle of it,” he explained. He said he found a solution when he read Gay Talese’s Esquire magazine article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” which focuses on the circle around that singer. Another help was Roberto Bolaño’s novel“The Savage Detectives,” which Mr. James described as “a very conscious template.”

Characters based on real-life people, including Cuban exiles and their C.I.A. handlers, play central roles in the novel. Jamaican politicians like the rival former prime ministers Michael Manley and Edward Seaga are very much present, too, along with leaders of the “garrisons,” the communities and criminal militias that their parties controlled.

Mr. James warns, though, that “if you are going to read this as history, you’re bound to be disappointed and confounded.” A lot of the novel, he said, is “just me being a trickster.”

But he does remember overhearing as a child some of the stories he incorporates into the novel. His mother was a police detective and his father a police officer who became a lawyer, “so the world of crime and politics and disturbances was always around,” he said, discussed in hushed and coded adult conversations.

A few years ago, Mr. James said, a European interviewer began a question to him with “as someone who escaped the ghetto….” He remembers objecting: “I grew up in the suburbs, like every other kid in every other part of the world. We had two cars, and we argued about things like ‘Is “T. J. Hooker” better than “Starsky & Hutch?” ’ ”

After studying at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Mr. James spent more than a decade in advertising as a copywriter, graphic designer and art director. His clients included the dancehall star Sean Paul, for whom he designed several CD covers, and The New York Times’s T Magazine. During much of that time, he said, “I made a big point of not writing seriously and even stopped reading for a while, too.”

But he was drawn back to literature by what he described as the “lack of a sense of possibility” he felt in Jamaica. Publishers and agents in New York showed no interest in a draft of what became “John Crow’s Devil,” his first novel. But when he took a chapter to a writing workshop in Kingston taught by a visiting American, Kaylie Jones, she was immediately taken by Mr. James’s writing and choice of subject.

“What leaped out at me right away was that he was a phenomenally visual writer with a lyrical, magical voice,” said Ms. Jones, who teaches writing at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. “I was shocked that nobody had picked up this guy.”

A stint in the writing program at Wilkes enabled Mr. James to work on a second novel, “The Book of Night Women,” set on a sugar plantation in colonial times. He now teaches literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul.

Chunks of Mr. James’s novels, especially “Seven Killings,” are written in Jamaican patois. He describes himself as “bilingual,” fond of using dialect in speech and also to discuss serious questions of race, class and politics in the novel, but equally comfortable employing standard speech in interviews and the classroom, with an accent that is beginning to incorporate the flat tones of the American Midwest.

“When we are taking our business out in the public, that’s not how you are supposed to speak,” he said of patois. “It’s an embarrassment” to older and middle-class Jamaicans, he added, “especially if they hear I’m an English teacher. ‘Why are you speaking broken English?’ As if this is something that needs to be fixed.”

article by Larry Rohter via nytimes.com

R.I.P. American Book Award-Winning Writer J. California Cooper

By goodblacknews on September 28, 2014
J. California Cooper in 1987. (Credit: Ellen Banner)

J. California Cooper, an award-winning writer whose black female characters confront a world of indifference and betrayal, but find kinship there in unexpected places, died on September 20th in Seattle. She was 82.  A spokesman for Random House, her publisher, confirmed her death. She had had several heart attacks in recent years.

Ms. Cooper won an American Book Award in 1989 for the second of her six story collections, “Homemade Love.” Her short story “Funny Valentines,” about a woman in a troubled marriage who repairs an old rift with a cousin when she moves back home, was turned into a 1999 television movie starring Alfre Woodard and Loretta Devine.

Writing in a vernacular first-person style, Ms. Cooper set her stories in an indeterminate rural past permeated with violence and the ghost of slavery. The African-American women she depicts endure abandonment, betrayal, rape and social invisibility, but they survive.

“Some Soul to Keep” (1987), her third collection, includes over-the-back-fence tales. One story tells of two women who become close friends after one woman’s husband dies and the other’s leaves. They learn that long-lived rumors of their dislike for each other had been fabricated by their husbands. Another story is about a blind girl who is raped by her minister, gives birth to his son and raises him alone because, she explains, he makes her forget she is blind.

Ms. Cooper’s 1991 novel, “Family,” one of five she wrote, is narrated by the ghost of a slave woman who committed suicide before the Civil War and who follows the lives of her descendants as they mingle and procreate in a new interracial world, marveling at how “from one woman all these different colors and nationalities could come into being.”

Ms. Cooper was clear about the religious values that informed her stories. “I’m a Christian,” she told The Washington Post in 2000. “That’s all I am. If it came down to Christianity and writing, I’d let the writing go. God is bigger than a book.”

In an interview on NPR in 2006, she said, “What I’m basically trying to do is help somebody make some right choices.”

Dr. Sheena C. Howard Wins 2014 Comic Con Eisner Award for Book "Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation"

By goodblacknews on August 13, 2014
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Dr. Sheena C. Howard

More than 100,000 people attended the International Comic Convention (aka Comic Con) in San Diego this year, but only a few walked away winners of an Eisner Award, one of the most prestigious honors in the comics industry – an Eisner is equivalent to an Oscar. I was honored to be one of those winners, along with co-editor Ronald Jackson for the book, “Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation.”

In 2009 I embarked on writing my dissertation at Howard University on Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks” comic strip. Much to my dismay there were no published works that provided a historical account of the contributions of African-American cartoonists on the funny pages.Most books that dealt with the history of American comics, failed to even mention Black artists – this was the impetus for the book, “Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation.”

UnknownAdmittedly, I had not been an avid comic book or graphic novel reader as a child, but even so, as a critical media scholar I knew I needed to do whatever I could to fill this void within academic literature.When I first heard about the Eisner nomination for Best Academic/ Scholarly Work during the winter of 2014, I was amazed. Rarely, does an academic have the opportunity to cross over to the popular culture realm for an academic book. Since this was my first book, I was just happy to be nominated but did not expect to win.
On Friday July 25th, the Eisner award ceremony was held at the San Diego Hilton Bayfront hotel, with doors opening at 7:00 p.m. The ceremony consisted of fans seated in the back and Eisner nominees seated closest to the stage. Upon entering I immediately noticed the attendance of Jack Mendelsohn (writer for “Ninja Turtles”), Reginald Hudlin (Producer of “Django Unchained”) and Orlando Jones (actor).

Walter Mosley's "Devil in a Blue Dress" Headed to Broadway

By goodblacknews on August 3, 2014

devil in a blue dress, denzel washington,
It was first a novel, then a film and now it’s headed to Broadway. “Devil in a Blue Dress” will be getting the theater treatment.  The popular film that starred Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle in 1995 — based on one of Walter Mosley‘s most popular works — is coming to the Great White Way.
“Devil in a Blue Dress” is a noir novel and film about a man in 1948 Los Angeles who loses his aerospace manufacturing job and turns to private detective work.
Mosley revealed the Broadway news when he was promoting his new book, “Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore.”  He has partnered with Jazz musician and composer Branford Marsalis to bring the work to the stage.  There’s no word on if Washington or Cheadle will reprise their roles from the film, but the production should begin within the next year.
article by Deron Dalton via eurweb.com

James Baldwin’s 90th Birthday Honored in Harlem; Street Renamed James Baldwin Way

By goodblacknews on August 3, 2014
James Baldwin in Paris in 1986.
James Baldwin in Paris in 1986. (Credit: Peter Turnley/Corbis)

James Baldwin, a Harlem native who died in 1987, would have turned 90 on Saturday. Among the many tributes in a year in which his legacy as a major writer is being celebrated, a portion of East 128th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, was renamed James Baldwin Way.

Baldwin, whose classic works include the novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and the essay collections “The Fire Next Time” and “Notes of a Native Son” attended Public School 24 (now the Harlem Renaissance School) on that block. Nearby, the marquee of the Apollo Theater, at 253 West 125th Street,  read “Happy 90th Birthday James Baldwin.”

“We’re reclaiming him as a son of Harlem,” said Rich Blint, a Baldwin scholar and associate director in the Office of Community Outreach and Education at the Columbia University School of the Arts. The university, along with Harlem Stage and New York Live Arts, is participating in a citywide consideration of Baldwin.

In this year of all things Baldwin, some fans and scholars have expressed concern that his complex presence is fading in too many high schools.  “We want to reintroduce his contemporary relevance,” said Trevor Baldwin, a nephew who attended the Saturday festivities.

The writer was known for fiery works about race and for frank portrayals of sexuality, in novels like “Giovanni’s Room” and “Another Country,” as well as for his work in the civil rights movement.

“I want people to be interested in the courage of his life choices,” Trevor Baldwin said.

The street renaming concluded with a musical procession to the National Black Theater at 2031 Fifth Avenue, between 125th and 126th Streets, with readings from “The Fire Next Time” and testimonials from those who knew Baldwin.

article by Felicia R. Lee via nytimes.com

New Wave of African Writers with an Internationalist Bent

By goodblacknews on July 26, 2014
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the premiere, in Lagos, Nigeria, of the film “Half of a Yellow Sun,” based on her novel. (Credit: Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

More than a decade ago, when the young Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was struggling to get her first novel, “Purple Hibiscus,” published, an agent told her that things would be easier “if only you were Indian,” because Indian writers were in vogue. Another suggested changing the setting from Nigeria to America. Ms. Adichie didn’t take this as commentary on her work, she said, but on the timidity of the publishing world when it came to unknown writers and unfamiliar cultures, especially African ones.

These days she wouldn’t receive that kind of advice. Black literary writers with African roots (though some grew up elsewhere), mostly young cosmopolitans who write in English, are making a splash in the book world, especially in the United States. They are on best-seller lists, garner high profile reviews and win major awards, in America and in Britain. Ms. Adichie, 36, the author of “Americanah,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction this year, is a prominent member of an expanding group that includes Dinaw Mengestu, Helen Oyeyemi, NoViolet Bulawayo, Teju Cole, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Taiye Selasi, among others.

The Ethiopian-born novelist Dinaw Mengestu in 2010, when his book “How to Read the Air” was published. (Credit: Ed Ou for The New York Times)

There are reasons for the critical mass now, say writers, publishers and literature scholars. After years of political and social turmoil, positive changes in several African nations are helping to greatly expand the number of writers and readers. Newer awards like the Caine Prize for African Writing have helped, too, as have social media, the Internet and top M.F.A. programs. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, black writers with recent African roots will make up more than 10 percent of the fiction students come September. Moreover, the number of African immigrants in the United States has more than quadrupled in the past two decades, to almost 1.7 million.

And publishing follows trends: Women, Asian-American, Indian and Latino writers have all been “discovered” and had their moment in the sun — as have African-Americans, some of whom envy the attention given to writers with more recent links in Africa.

“People used to ask where the African writers were,” said Aminatta Forna, author of “The Hired Man” (2013, set in Croatia). “They were cleaning offices and working as clerks.”

Some writers and critics scoff at the idea of lumping together diverse writers with ties to a diverse continent. But others say that this wave represents something new in its sheer size, after a long fallow period. (There were some remarkable exceptions, like Wole Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature and Ben Okri’s 1991 Booker Prize.) And it differs from the postcolonial wave, roughly beginning in the 1960s, which brought international acclaim to writers like Chinua Achebe and Nuruddin Farah, among others.

R.I.P. Walter Dean Myers, Prolific and Beloved Author of Award-Winning Children’s Books

By goodblacknews on July 4, 2014
Walter Dean Myers, beloved and deeply respected children’s book author, died on July 1, 2014, following a brief illness. He was 76 years old.
In a career spanning over 45 years, Walter Dean Myers wrote more than 100 books for children of all ages. His impressive body of work includes two Newbery Honor Books, three National Book Award Finalists, and six Coretta Scott King Award/Honor-winning books. He was the winner of the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award, the first recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.
In 2010, Walter was the United States nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and in 2012 he was appointed the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, serving a two-year tenure in the position. Also in 2012, Walter was recognized as an inaugural NYC Literary Honoree, an honor given by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for his substantial lifetime accomplishments and contribution to children’s literature.
Myers at an appearance as National Ambassador
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of erudite and beloved author Walter Dean Myers. Walter’s many award-winning books do not shy away from the sometimes gritty truth of growing up. He wrote books for the reader he once was, books he wanted to read when he was a teen. He wrote with heart and he spoke to teens in a language they understood. For these reasons, and more, his work will live on for a long, long time,” said Susan Katz, President and Publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books.
Walter Dean Myers was born Walter Milton Myers on August 12, 1937, in Martinsburg,
In Walter’s memoir, Bad Boy, he wrote, “Harlem is the first place called ‘home’ that I can remember.” This sentiment is reflected in Walter’s writing, whether via a love letter to the neighborhood in the picture book Harlem; a story of a boy’s trial for a crime committed in Harlem, in the novel Monster; or the tale of two friends struggling to see a future beyond the community they know in the novel Darius & Twig. Walter spent much of his childhood playing basketball on the courts of Harlem and checking books out of the George Bruce Branch of the New York Public Library. Florence Dean taught Walter to read in their kitchen, and when he began attending Public School 125, he could read at a second-grade level. Though Walter struggled through school with a speech impediment and poor grades, and he had trouble with discipline throughout his school career, he remained an avid reader. His love of reading soon progressed to a love of writing.West Virginia. Walter’s birth mother, Mary Myers, died after the birth of his younger sister, Imogene. His father, George, sent Walter to live with his first wife, Florence Dean, and her husband, Herbert Dean, in Harlem, along with Florence and George’s two daughters. Walter would eventually adopt the middle name “Dean” to honor Florence and Herbert.
Walter wrote well in high school and one teacher, who recognized his talent but also knew he was going to drop out, told him to keep on writing, no matter what—“It’s what you do,” she said. Walter did drop out of Stuyvesant High School, though they now claim him as a graduate (which Walter always found funny). At the age of seventeen, he enlisted in the Army. Years later, after his safe return home and while working a construction job, Walter would remember this teacher’s advice. He started writing again…and he didn’t stop.
Walter’s body of work includes picture books, novels for teens, poetry, and non-fiction alike. In 1968, Walter’s first published book, Where Does the Day Go?, illustrated by Leo Carty, won an award from the Council on Interracial Books for Children. Walter and his son Christopher, an artist, collaborated on a number of picture books for young readers, including We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart and Harlem, which received a Caldecott Honor Award, as well as the teen novel and National Book Award Finalist Autobiography of My Dead Brother, which Christopher illustrated. Walter’s novel Scorpions won a Newbery Honor Medal and the Margaret A. Edwards Award, while gritty teen novels Lockdown andMonster were both National Book Award Finalists. Monster appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, won the first Michael L. Printz Award, and received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. His stunning Coretta Scott King Award-winning novel, Fallen Angels (1988), about the Vietnam War, was named one of the top ten American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults of all time. Twenty years later, Myers wrote a riveting contemporary companion novel, Sunrise Over Fallujah, which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2008.
In Invasion (2010), Myers once again explored the effects and horrors of war through young protagonists, this time set in World War II. His upcoming books include Juba!, (HarperCollins, April 2015) a novel for teens based on the life of a young African American dancer, and On a Clear Day (Crown/Random House Books for Young Readers, September 2014). A graphic novel adaptation of Monster (HarperCollins) is also forthcoming.
Walter often wrote books about the most difficult time in his own life—his teenage years—for the reader he once was; these were the books that he wished were available when he was that age. Throughout his life, Walter worked to make sure young adults had the tools necessary to become hungry readers, thirsty learners, and, therefore, successful adults. He frequently met with incarcerated teens in juvenile detention centers and received countless letters thanking him for his inspirational words. Walter also worked with and mentored teenage fan and writer Ross Workman, and they published the novel Kick together. As the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature from 2012-2013, Walter traveled around the United States promoting the slogan “Reading is not optional.” He strove to spread the message that a brighter future depends on reading proficiency and widespread literacy, not only during his two-year tenure as National Ambassador, but beyond. More than anything, Walter pushed for his stories to teach children and teenagers never to give up on life.
Walter lived in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his wife Constance. He is survived by Constance, as well as his two sons, Christopher and Michael Dean. He was predeceased by his daughter, Karen.  “Walter Dean Myers was a compassionate, wonderful, and brilliant man.  He wrote about children who needed a voice and their stories told.  His work will live on for generations to come.  It was an honor to work with him for so many years,” said Miriam Altshuler, Walter’s literary agent.
article via cbcbooks.org

 

Mixed Remixed Festival to Host Largest West Coast Loving Day Celebration Tomorrow (June 14) in Los Angeles

By goodblacknews on June 13, 2014

Mixed Remixed Staff
Mixed Remixed Festival Founder Heidi Durrow (center); Festival staffers (l-r): Lesa Lakin, Jennifer Frappier and Jamie Moore

The Mixed Remixed Festival, a family festival, hosts the largest Loving Day celebration on the West Coast at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles (100 N. Central Ave.) tomorrow, Saturday, June 14, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Loving Day is officially held every year on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia, which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen states.
The festival celebrates stories of the mixed experience and multiracial Americans, the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., bringing together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial and multicultural families and individuals for workshops, readings, performances, and film screenings.
A fiscally-sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization, the festival is produced by New York Times best-selling writer Heidi Durrow and a talented staff of volunteers.
The event is free and open to the public. The complete festival schedule can be found at www.mixedremixed.org. Highlights include:
• The largest West Coast Loving Day celebration at 6:30 p.m. with the annual Storyteller’s Prize presentation and live show. The prize will go to Comedy Central’s hit comedic duo Key & Peele, award-winning writer Susan Straight, and Cheerios’ marketing team as part of a dynamic live show featuring comedians, musicians and spoken-word poets. This program is currently reserved at capacity, but any open seats near showtime will be offered to individuals on the wait list. Call (213) 293-7077 or email heidi@mixedremixed.org.
• Families can enjoy interactive craft activities all day as part of the Target Free Family Day; storytelling time with Sebastian Jones, co-author with actress Garcelle Beauvais of the children’s book “I Am Mixed”; and a writing workshop for kids with Lora Nakamura, author of “Bonsai Babes.”
• KPCC, Southern California’s largest public radio station, will produce a special panel called “#Multicultivate,” moderated by KPCC’s Josie Huang.
• Two award-winning feature films: “Sleeping with the Fishes” (directed by Nicole Gomez Fisher), winner of the Best New Director Award at the Brooklyn Film Festival, and “Closure” (directed by Bryan Tucker), a feature documentary about a transracial adoptee’s search for her biological parents. The latter screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker and transracial adoptees and activists. The festival will also present a program of several ground-breaking short films.
• Readings by Krista Bremer, author of the hit memoir about her bicultural marriage, “My Accidental Jihad” (Algonquin Books); Crystal Chan, author of “Bird”; Chris Terry, author of “Zero Fade”; and many others. Skylight Books is the Festival’s official bookseller.
• Acting and writing workshops will be led by published authors and professional actors. Award-winning poet Aaron Samuels, author of the prize-winning “Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps,” will present a poetry-writing workshop; celebrated voice-over artist and acting professor Rayme Cornell will lead a voice-over class; and Khanisha Foster will offer a Performer’s Bootcamp. A complete list of workshops appears on the festival website.
• More than a dozen esteemed panelists will speak on diverse topics related to the mixed experience. Panelists include scholar Marcia Dawkins, activist/filmmaker Thomas Lopez, and YouTube’s Channing Sargent.
Festival sponsors include: Cheerios (Silver Sponsor), Japanese American National Museum (www.janm.org), Zerflin.com, Pitfire Artisan Pizza, Miss Jessie’s, and Poets & Writers through a grant from the James Irvine Foundation.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)