This year marks the centennial of the birth of John Oliver Killens - "To honor this literary champion, the Center for Black Literature, The Harlem Writers Guild, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will celebrate Killens’s legacy. John Oliver Killens at 100 is a pre-conference event to the 13th National Black Writers Conference, and the program will include a reflection on Killens’s life, a discussion on the significance of his works, and dramatic presentations with special guests Malaika Adero, Arthur Flowers, Woodie King Jr., Bernice McFadden, Diane Richards, and Ted Wilson among others who align themselves with Killens’s politics and purpose."
Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days (2001), will attend the Library of Congress National Book Festival to discuss his anticipated new novel, The Underground Railroad.
Author Paul Beatty's novel The Sellout and Margo Jefferson's memoir Negroland were two notable winners at the National Book Critics Circle Award on Thursday: "Beatty’s crackling satire involves modern-day segregation, slavery and a host of racial stereotypes upended. Jefferson's memoir, meanwhile, offers candid and often ironic commentary of her upbringing in an affluent African American family in Chicago during the 1950s and ’60s." Beatty is author of prior novels The White Boy Shuffle (2001) and Slumberland (2008), both of which are satirical commentaries of race in America.
The New York Times reviewed Kaitlyn Greenidge’s debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, about a black family who agrees to move from a predominately black city to an upscale white city and live in a mansion. The catch? They must be part of a social experiment that involves living with a chimpanzee.
Next month is National Poetry Month! Check out the Washington Post's recommendation for the best poetry books for March.
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