Harlem's Schomburg Center Organizes Inaugural Literary Festival

HARLEM, NY — Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will hold its first literary festival at the end of this month to celebrate authors of African descent and publications that focus on black culture and history.

The inaugural Schomburg Center Literary Festival features a full day of programs on Saturday, June 29 at the center's Lenox Avenue and West 135th Street building as well as outdoor programs on West 135th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr and Malcolm X Boulevards. Events include live musical storytelling, teen poetry readings, writing workshops and panels that cover a wide range of topics.

Featured authors will conduct signings throughout the day and all events are free and open to the public, Schomburg Center officials said. People interested in attending can register for events online.

"As a library and cultural center, the Schomburg Center has long had a relationship with the printed word," Schomburg Center Director Kevin Young said in a statement. "With our first annual literary festival we literally take that long-standing commitment to books and authors to the streets and avenues of Harlem, USA. We look forward to many more celebrations of the global Black experience as we approach our 95th anniversary."

Books by authors featured during the festival will be on sale at the Schomburg Center gift store during the festival. The center will also set up a marketplace on West 135th Street and offer activities such as bookmark making, and haiku writing.

Check out a full schedule of the festival's planned events below:

Scheduled Workshops/ Programs:

• 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM - Writing Workshop with Brooklyn Slam Team, Group Poem Production (American Negro Theatre)
• 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM - Children’s Book Reading (American Negro Theatre)
• 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Baldwin and Friends: Community discussion of James Baldwin's Price of the Ticket (American Negro Theatre)

Panels:

LOCATION: Langston Hughes Auditorium: Inside the Schomburg Center

11:00 AM - NEW DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA 75 MIN

• Rosamond S. King – “The is for the Women”, “the hotbox and the flood”,
• Ifeona Fulani – “Three Islands, Two Cities: The Making of a Black/Caribbean/Woman Writer / Scholar”
• zakia henderson-brown – “unarmed” , “A Man Walks into a Bar”
• Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond – “After Edwin”
• Rashidah Ismaili – “Dancing at Midnight”

12:30 PM - BLACK CULINARY HISTORY 45 MIN

• MIchael Twitty, The Cooking Gene
• Therese Nelson, Moderator

2:00 PM - POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN THE CARIBBEAN 45 MIN

• Ishion Hutchinson, House of Common Lords
• Safiya Sinclair, Cannibal
• Ifeona Fulani
• Garnette Cadogan, Moderator

3:30 PM - HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE A CANON: THE IMPACT OF KENYAN WRITER BINYAVANGA WAINAINA 75 min

LOCATION: ADAM CLAYTON POWELL (ACP) STAGE : Outside at 135th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd

10:30 AM - LIVE MUSICAL STORYTELLING 30 MIN

• Eloise Greenfield's Honey I Love with poet Cryus Aaron & bass player Max
• Yuyi Morales' Dreamers with by singer Aurora Rose & guitarist
• Jason Reynold's Long Walk Down with theater collective Anjun & Co.
• Mahogany L. Browne's Woke Baby with bboy & beatboxer McPherson

11:00 AM - YA is LIT

• Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl, Moderator
• Mariame Kaba, Missing Daddy
• Tochi Onyebuchi, War Girls
• Mahogany Browne, Black Girl Magic

12:00 PM - RISE OF NEW AFRICAN NARRATIVES 45 MIN

• Patrice Nganang, Mount Pleasant
• Abdi Nor Iftin, Call Me American
• Glaydah Namukasa, The Deadly Ambition, “The last time I played Mirundi”
• Uzodinma Iweala, Moderator (CEO, Africa Center; Beast of No Country, Speak No Evil)

1:00 PM - DEBUT AUTHOR (Title TENT) 45 MIN

• Darnell Moore, No Ashes in the Fire
• Akiba Solomon and Kenyra Rankin, How We Fight White Supremacy

3:00PM - RADICAL IMAGINATION AND WAYWARD PRACTICES: BLACK WOMEN NARRATIVES 45 MIN

• Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
• DaMaris Hill, PhD, A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing
• Tanisha C. Ford, Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl's Love Letter to the Power of Fashion
• Glory Edim, Well-Read Black Girl, Moderator

LOCATION: ZORA NEALE HURSTON STAGE: Outside at 135th Street and Malcolm X Blvd

11:00 AM - VASHTI HARRISON Reading and Illustrations 45 MIN
12:00 PM - TEEN POETRY 45 MIN
1:00 PM - OFF THE PAGES OF WANDA COLEMAN’S POETRY 45 MIN
3:00 PM - SALON 127 hosted by I Too Arts - Langston Hughes House 45 MIN
4:00 PM - NEW GENERATION: AFRICAN POETS (CHAPBOOKS) 45 MIN