Lindsay J. Cropper Memorial Writers Series: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Location

This reading/craft talk will take place on Zoom.

Free

On Thursday, October 29, 2020, at 12:30 p.m., the Lindsay J. Cropper Memorial Series welcomes fiction writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for a craft talk and reading.

Thursday, October 29, 12:30 p.m., Craft Talk and Reading with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Zoom Link: https://sandiego.zoom.us/j/92649059641?pwd=ZVc4Zjl3TWk0V3NzejBRYSsxY0lGZz09 
Meeting ID: 926 4905 9641
Passcode: cropper

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” honorees, is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.

Sponsored by the Cropper Center for Creative Writing.

Please note that all fall readings and craft talks will take place on Zoom.

In a recent Statement of Solidarity written after the murder of George Floyd and in the wake of protests against police brutality, the Department of English noted that, “It is precisely in times like these that we witness the unique capacity of literature to remind us of the innate dignity of all human life.” Since its inception in 2004, the Cropper Center has prioritized bringing a diversity of voices to campus, to both enliven our campus community’s encounter with the written word, and, by extension, to help cultivate a collective understanding of the broad array of human experiences. 

Guided by these values, and in light of the English Department’s recent reaffirmation of its “commitment to the enduring work of anti-racism,” the Cropper Center is proud to announce that the 2020/2021 Lindsay J. Cropper Memorial Writers Series will be a celebration of Black creative work exclusively. This fall, we will welcome the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Jericho Brown, the essayist and memoirist Kiese Laymon, and the fiction writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. In the Spring, we will host a reading with our very own faculty member, poet Alexis Jackson. 

Sponsored by the Cropper Center for Creative Writing.

Please note that all fall readings and craft talks will take place on Zoom.