2023 Festival: Literacy is Generational Wealth

This year’s theme “Literacy is Generational Wealth” features opening book talk with Sarah Ladipo Manyika (Between Starshine and Clay), the poetry of Cynthia Manick (No Sweet Without Brine, Blue Hallelujahs), distinguished musician Henry Threadgill (Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music), writing across the African Diaspora with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond  (Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky) and delving into history with Claude Johnson (The Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball's Forgotten Era) among others. Our writing workshops return with Harlem Writers Guild and The Moth. Mahogany L. Browne (Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby, and Black Girl Magic) also returns with the Woke Baby! Festival featuring children’s readings, live music, and craft-making.

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Author Schedule for June 17

Check out the schedule of author readings, panel discussions, and workshops, ranging from prose to poetry to young adult novels, fiction, and nonfiction. The festival is free, public, and open to all ages. Programs will be held from 11:00 AM – 6 PM on four stages inside the Schomburg Center and outdoors on 135th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Malcolm X Boulevard, including:

  • Latasha N. Nevada Diggs Village in conversation with Claudia Rankine 
  • Danté Stewart Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle with moderator Robert Jones, Jr.
  • Poetry for our time with Candace Williams I Am the Most Dangerous Thing
  • Debut authors Magogodi oaMphela Makhene Innards and Tyriek Rashawn White We Are a Haunting: A Novel
  • Children's Reading and Art making with Kahran and Regis Bethencourt Crowned: Radical Folk and Fairy Tales
Schedule

  • MON JUNE 12 | 6:30 PM  

    Black Writers at Work

    Authors Farah Jasmine Griffin ( In Search of a Beautiful Freedom, Read Until I Understand), Candice Iloh (Every Body Looking), and Ibi Zoboi (Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler, American Street) and more join us for an intergenerational conversation on the writing practices of Black writers today and writers featured in the recently republished Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate. 

    Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard.—Claudia Tate  

     

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  • WED JUNE 14 | 6:30 PM

    Henry Threadgill in Conversation with Yusef Komunyakaa

    ​Join us for an event celebrating the publication of Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music (Knopf), the autobiography of composer and multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill, co-written with Columbia University professor and Schomburg staff member Brent Hayes Edwards. The evening will feature a reading and conversation with Threadgill and the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, the two Black Vietnam veterans who have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as they reflect upon their experiences in the war and its impact on their long careers as artists.

     

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  • About the Schomburg Center

    Founded in 1925 and named a National Historic Landmark in 2017, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

  • Artist Spotlight

    Learn about the artist behind the festival artwork and more, by visiting the Schomburg Center Literary Festival website here.

     

  • Shop the Literary Festival

    Visit the Schomburg Shop and see a selection of books, clothing items, tote bags, mugs, and more created by Black and Brown artists for all ages.

Past Literary Festival Programs

Enjoy revisiting a series of author talks with participants from across the globe.

  • Read Until You Understand

    • WATCH | Read Until You Understand by Farah Jasmine Griffin + Tressie McMillan Cottom (Non-Fiction)
    • WATCH | How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (Non-Fiction) with Dr. Andrea Roberts
    • WATCH | One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race by Yaba Blay, PhD (Non-Fiction)
    • WATCH | A Conversation with Eddie Glaude, Jr, Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (Non-Fiction)
    • WATCH | The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson + The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America by Ellis Cose (Non-Fiction)
    Image of a Black woman sitting on a wrought iron fence reading a book and a microphone on a stand facing her

  • Freedom Songs in Everyday Life

    • WATCH | Black Culinary History: Michael Twitty and Therese Nelson
    • WATCH | The Age of Phillis (Poetry) and The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Fiction) by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers 
    • WATCH | The Stories of Black Farmers: Natalie Baszile We Are Each Other's Harvest (Non-Fiction)
    • WATCH | Mama Phife Represent by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor (Poetry/Memoir) + The Renunciations: Poems by Donika Kelly (Poetry)
    • WATCH | A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib in conversation with Dawnie Walton (Fiction)
    • WATCH | Long Division by Kiese Laymon (Fiction) + Let My People Vote by Desmond Meade (Memoir)
    Two black people sitting in chase on a stage facing each other discussing a book

  • Sea to Sea

    • WATCH | A Girl is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Fiction) 
    • WATCH | A Conversation with Bernardine Evaristo and Roxane Gay
    • WATCH | 25th Anniversary of the landmark anthology Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby
    • WATCH | Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri  with Chris Abani (Poetry)
    • WATCH | A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes with Dimitry Elias Léger (Fiction)
    • WATCH | The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi with Eloghosa Osunde (Fiction)
    • WATCH | The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta with Emil Wilbekin (YA)
    A Black woman with an up style hairdo standing at a podium with a mic and a photo in the background with a book cover that reads New Daughter of Africa

  • Reading, An Act of Rebellion and Joy

    WATCH | Reading, An Act of Rebellion and Joy with authors Jason Reynolds and Roxane Gay

    WATCH | Black Manhattan In and Out of the Archives: Kia Corthron, Moon and the Mars, Kevin McGruder, Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem with moderator Eric K. Washington

    WATCH | Health and Racism in America: Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation with moderator Rebecca Carroll

    WATCH | Literary Monuments, Friendship, and Toni Morrison: A.J. Verdelle, Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison with moderator Tiphanie Yanique

    WATCH | Black Food Stories: Bryant Terry Black Food with moderator Summer Sewell

    WATCH | Embracing Desire, A Debut Author’s Journey: Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Big Girl with moderator Jacqueline Woodson

    WATCH | To Be Brave and in Love: Akwaeke Emezi, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty with moderator Nicole Dennis-Benn

    ​WATCH | Crafting Community in Short Stories: Sidik Fofana, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, Ladee Hubbard, The Last Suspicious Holdout: Stories with moderator Ainehi Edoro, Brittle Paper

    WATCH | Kemi Alabi, Against Heaven with Shanelle Gabriel

    WATCH | Akwaeke Emezi, Content Warning: Everything with Shanelle Gabriel

    WATCH | Roger Reeves, Best Barbarian with Novella Ford

    WATCH | Critical Thought: A Evening of Selected Works by Greg Tate with New York Times bestselling poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times cultural critic, scholar, writer, and activist, Salamishah Tillet, Creative, art collector, archivist and founder of The Gates Preserve Syreeta Gates, poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, recording artist, actor, theater director, Carl Hancock Rux, Jahmani Perry, an interdisciplinary artist, photographer, and award-winning filmmaker and Rashid Shabazz, Executive Director of Critical Minded.

    WATCH | The Black Librarian in America: Reflections, Resistance, and Reawakening 

     

    Black and white photos of prominent Black writers

The Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List

For 95 years, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has preserved, protected, and fostered a greater understanding of the Black experience through its collections, exhibitions, programs, and scholarship. In response to the uprisings across the globe demanding justice for Black lives in 2020, the Schomburg Center published its Black Liberation Reading List. The 95 titles on the list represent books we and the public turn to regularly as activists, students, archivists, and curators, with a particular focus on books by Black authors and those whose papers we steward. Explore the lists for kids, teens, and adults, and discover which titles are available in accessible formats.

The Schomburg Center Literary Festival is powered by Puma. Additional support is provided by Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.