Medgar Evers College is a public college in New York City. It is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), offering baccalaureate and associate degrees. It was officially established in 1970 through cooperation between educators and community leaders in central Brooklyn. It is named after Medgar Wiley Evers, an African American civil rights leader who was assassinated on June 12, 1963.
The Republic of New Afrika (RNA), founded in 1968 as the Republic of New Africa (RNA), is a black nationalist organization and black separatist movement in the United States popularized by black militant groups. The larger New Afrika movement in particular has three goals:
Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors.
The Dew Breaker is a collection of linked stories by Edwidge Danticat, published in 2004. The title come from Haitian Creole name for a torturer during the regimes of François "Papa Doc" and Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
Paule Marshall was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant.
The Langston Hughes Medal has been awarded annually by the Langston Hughes Festival of the City College of New York since 1978. The medal "is awarded to highly distinguished writers from throughout the African American diaspora for their impressive works of poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography and critical essays that help to celebrate the memory and tradition of Langston Hughes. Each year, the LHF’s Advisory Committee reviews the work of major black writers from Africa to America whose work is accessed as likely having a lasting impact on world literature.".
Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer.
Bomb is an American arts magazine edited by artists and writers, published quarterly in print and daily online. It is composed primarily of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplines—visual art, literature, film, music, theater, architecture, and dance. In addition to interviews, Bomb publishes reviews of literature, film, and music, as well as new poetry and fiction. Bomb is published by New Art Publications, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Nathalie Handal is a French-American poet and writer born to a Palestinian family from Bethlehem. She lives in Queens, NY.
John Oliver Killens was an American fiction writer from Georgia. His novels featured elements of African-American life. He also wrote plays, short stories and essays, and published articles in a range of outlets.
Raymond Keith Gilyard is a writer and American professor of English who teaches and researches in the fields of rhetoric, composition, literacy studies, sociolinguistics, and African American literature. Interested in the complex interplay among race, ethnicity, language, writing, and politics, his primary interest lies in identifying intersections of African American English and composing practices. Advocating African American English as a legitimate discourse, Gilyard has been a prominent voice in the movement to recognize ethnic and cultural discourses other than Standard English as valid. As a literary scholar and creative writer, his interests have been in the interplay among African American literature, rhetorical criticism, and bio-critical work.
Elizabeth Nunez is a Trinidadian American novelist and Distinguished pProfessor of English at Hunter College–CUNY, New York City.
Nkiru Books was one of the longest operating African-American bookstores in Brooklyn, New York City, United States. Founded by Leothy Miller Owens in 1976, the bookstore was bought by Talib Kweli and Mos Def in 2000. Thereafter it was operated as the Nkiru Center for Education and Culture, a nonprofit organization promoting literacy and multicultural awareness for people of color. In its last incarnation it was located at 732 Washington Avenue.
The National Black Writers Conference is presented by the Center for Black Literature (CBL) at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. Founded by Dr. Brenda M. Greene, the Center for Black Literature was officially approved by the College Council of Medgar Evers College and by the Board of Trustees in October 2002. Its mission is to expand, broaden, and enrich the public's knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of literature produced by people of the African Diaspora. It accomplishes its mission through a variety of programs and partnerships and by serving as a forum for the discussion, reading, research, study, and critical analysis of Black literature. It is the only center devoted to this mission in the country.
Brother I'm Dying, published in 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf, is a family memoir by novelist Edwidge Danticat. In 2007, the title won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was also nominated for the National Book Award.
Jeffery Renard Allen is an American poet, essayist, short story writer, and novelist. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Harbors and Spirits and Stellar Places, and three works of fiction, the novel Rails Under My Back, a story collection Holding Pattern and a second novel, Song of the Shank. In writing about his fiction, reviewers often note his lyrical use of language and his playful use of form to write about African-American life. His poems tend to focus on music, mythology, history, film, and other sources, rather than narrative or autobiographical experiences.
Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer. Her novels include Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
Aspen Summer Words (ASW) is a festival of words, stories and ideas held each June in Aspen, Colorado. It is the flagship program of Aspen Words, a literary arts non-profit and program of the Aspen Institute. Until 2015, Aspen Words was known as the Aspen Writers' Foundation.
Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian-American writer and a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. As of 2008, she is the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of Humanities at Scripps College of the Claremont Consortium. As a writer, she focuses on Haitian culture, gender, class, sexuality, and Caribbean women's studies. Her novels have won several awards, including the prestigious Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award.
Nah Dove is an author, lecturer and scholar in African-American studies. She has lived in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Canada, the UK, and in the US, where she is an Assistant Professor Instruction in the Department of Africology and African American Studies at the College of Liberal Arts, Temple University, Philadelphia. Her book Afrikan Mothers: Bearers of Culture, Makers of Social Change was published in 1998 and her other writings include The Afrocentric School [a blueprint] (2021), and a contribution to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
