The Evanston Public Library has a full slate of Spring author events coming up, co-sponsored with Bookends & Beginnings Bookstore. The virtual events and authors they feature will focus on subject matter including civil rights, policing, motherhood, the American Dream, class and race, and feeling good in contemporary Black culture.
ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS:
Race, Gender & Policing
Thursday April 8, 6:30-7:30 PM, Register.
Legal Scholars Josephine Ross and Roger A. Fairfax, Jr. discuss their writings and research on the injustices of our criminal justice system and shed light on the ways policing and our legal systems can be improved.
Josephine Ross is a professor at the Howard University School of Law and a recognized expert on policing and the Constitution. Her book, “A Feminist Critique of Police Stops,” examines the parallels between stop-and-frisk policing and sexual harassment.
Roger A. Fairfax, Jr. is the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor and Founding Director of the Criminal Law and Policy Initiative at The George Washington University Law School. “Policing the Black Man,” to which he contributed, features essays by some of the nation’s most influential and respected criminal justice experts and legal scholars.
Civil Rights Leader C.T. Vivian
Thursday, April 15, 7-8 p.m., Register.
C.T. Vivian’s son Al Vivian and Steve Fiffer, the writer who worked with C.T. Vivian on his memoir, discuss C.T. Vivian’s life and his long-awaited memoir “It’s In The Action: Memories of a Nonviolent Warrior.” Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient C.T. Vivian worked hand in hand on voting rights and other efforts to end discrimination with the civil right movement’s most significant figures, including John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr.
Al Vivian is President & CEO of the Atlanta-based BASIC Diversity, Inc., the nation’s longest-serving diversity and inclusion firm, founded by his father.
Steve Fiffer is the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books, including collaborations with Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees, human rights activist Dr. Quentin Young, and former Secretary of State James Baker.
MIDWEST ADDRESS AUTHOR LITERARY LUNCHBREAK EVENTS
Nancy Johnson discusses her novel “The Kindest Lie” with Sara Paretsky.
Thursday April 15, 12-1 pm, Register.
“The Kindest Lie” captures the heartbreaking divide between Black and white communities and offers both an unflinching view of motherhood in contemporary America and the never-ending quest to achieve the American Dream.
Nancy Johnson, a native of Chicago’s South Side, worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates nationwide. The Kindest Lie is her first book.
Sara Paretsky is a New York Times bestselling mystery writer known for her popular series of novels featuring V.I. Warshawski, a female private investigator.
Megan Giddings discusses her novel Lakewood with Maxine Mei-Fung Chung.
Thursday May 20, 12-1 p.m., Register.
A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—part “The Handmaid’s Tale,” part “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” Megan Giddings is a fiction editor at The Offing, a winner of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, and a features editor at The Rumpus. She lives in Indiana. Maxine Mei-Fung Chung is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author of “The Eighth Girl.” Originally trained in the arts, she previously worked as a creative director for 10 years at Condé Nast, The Sunday Times, and The Times (London).
Badia Ahad-Legardy discusses her book “Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good In Contemporary Black Culture” with Natalie Moore.
Thursday May 27, 12-1 pm, Register.
Original and provocative, “Afro-Nostalgia” offers Black historical pleasure as a remedy to contend with the disillusionment of the present and the traumas of the past. Badia Ahad-Legardy, an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago, is a scholar of contemporary African American literature and culture whose research examines affective sentiments that are generally overlooked with respect to the inner lives of African Americans. Natalie Moore is a WBEZ reporter covering race, class and communities whose work has been widely published. She is also the author of “The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.”
Comments are closed.