Upcoming Events
Visit the CBL Online Archives
Writers on Writing with Dr. Brenda M. Greene
Writers on Writing Interview with Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Dr. Brenda Greene interviews Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of the collection of short stories Heads of the Colored People (Atria/37 INK, 2018). The book won the PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Award. Thompson-Spires stories address themes related to race, grief, mental illness, eating disorders, and police violence. Although they are often dark, they capture issues that people are reluctant to discuss and examine the interior lives of their characters. Greene and Thompson-Spires discuss the themes in the collection, the writing process and Thompson-Spires motivation for developing the stories.
Writers on Writing Interview with Shonda Buchanan
Dr. Brenda Greene interviews Shonda Buchanan, author of Black Indian: A Memoir (Wayne State University Press (2019). They discuss Buchanan’s mixed heritage and her motivation for writing this memoir. Buchanan addresses the intricate relationship between African Americans and Indians and describes how themes such as abuse, addiction, violence, healing, and spirituality have neem recurring themes in the stories of many African Americans and Black Indians
Writers on Writing Interview with
Kadiatou Diallo,
Mother of Amadou Diallo
On February 4, 1999, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean student named Amadou Diallo was fired upon with 41 rounds. The four officers who shot him were found not guilty. Dr. Greene interviews Kadiatou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo. They discuss her memoir My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son (One World, 2004), her son, and the impact that the tragic killing had on her family.
About the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
For 20 years, the programs of the Center for Black Literature (CBL) have had a dynamic impact in the literary field. The highly anticipated author readings and book signings, journals, symposia, conferences, panel discussions, and writing workshops—and the Center’s intellectual and accessible approach to programming—form an integrative approach to programming that sets CBL apart from others. CBL’s events are known for the way they ensure that Black literary scholarship and conversations are valued and sustained.
Contact Us
Center for Black Literature (CBL)
at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
1534 Bedford Avenue | 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, New York 11216
(Click HERE for the Postal Mailing Address)
Main Phone: (718) 804-8884
Main Office: info@centerforblackliterature.org
Donate to CBL Today!
To carry out our literary programs and special events, we depend on financial support from the public. Donations are welcome year-round. Please click HERE to donate. Thank you!
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The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College is supported in part by an American Rescue Plan Act grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support general operating expenses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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