“Once you realize that you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn’t do it.”

- James Baldwin

Is there a certain responsibility that is particular to Black writers? If so, what is it? Literary and performance artists like James Baldwin, Albert Camus, and Nina Simone held public views on what they believed to be the power and responsibility of creative work. Three writers discuss this topic on this panel moderated by Khadijah Ali-Coleman, executive director of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

About the Panelists

Monifa Love is the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Bowie State University. She also serves as a Professor in the Department of Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies. Love graduated with honors from Princeton University. She majored in anthropology, studied poetry with Galway Kinnell, and earned a certificate in Afro-American Studies. She received her doctorate with distinction from the Florida State University as a McKnight Doctoral Fellow and an associate of the great philosopher William R. Jones. Her work has been featured in national journals and magazines, encyclopedias, anthologies, and textbooks. is the award-winning author of Freedom in the Dismal, which will soon be translated into German and French, and a collection of prize-winning poetry, Dreaming Underground. She co-authored Romancing Harlem: A Life in Love with artist Charles Mills. Her most recent publication is “Battle Hymn of the Republic: Crownsville 1871-2021” in Obsidian, 47.1.

Monda Raquel Webb is an author, poet, award-winning filmmaker, and performing artist. Monda, voted Filmmaker of the Year in 2020 by the National Black Movie Association, established Little Known Stories Production Company, LLC as the production arm of Monda Media. In 2015, she wrote, directed and produced her first short film, “Zoo (Volkerschau)”, which has won several U.S. and International Film Festival Awards, including awards from Spain and Indonesia, for “Best Short (film)”, “Best Script”, “Excellence Award”, “Best International Short” and other categories. In 2019, Monda’s second film, “Pooch Sitter,” hit the festival circuit in January and ended the year with 11 screenings, 1 conference screen, three four-walls and earned an award for “Best Poster”. Collectively, both films have played over 40 festivals and won over 20 awards. Monda serves as Treasurer for Women in Film and Video, Washington, DC and is the Programming Coordinator and Board Member of the Chesapeake Film Festival.

DaMaris B. Hill is the author of Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood (2022), A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland (2019) -a 2020 NAACP Image Award finalist for Outstanding Literary Work, The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland (2016), \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Teks-chərs\(Visible Textures) (2015). Similar to her creative work, Hill’s scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky.

This virtual event is part of the Hurston/Wright 2022 Summer of Writing Series. From June 2022 to August 2022, we will be implementing 10 summer Writer's Week and Weekend writing workshop retreats virtually and on the campuses of Virginia Tech, Rutgers University and Howard University. Our summer fellows will have free access to our virtual and in-person events in the Hurston/Wright 2022 Summer of Writing Series that are also open and available to the public as well, some free and some for fee.

ABOUT US

The Hurston/Wright Foundation’s mission is to provide services, supports and opportunities that mentor, recognize and provide community for professional and aspiring Black writers. Workshops and classes taught by award-winning authors serve emerging and midcareer adult writers. More than a thousand Black writers have taken our classes since the first one in 1996, increasing diversity in the cultural community as they have gone on to create books and careers as professors, local cultural workers, and national thought leaders.

Our first program, the Hurston/Wright Awards for College Writers, has honored 92 students, 30 of whom subsequently published books. Among them are Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), Natalie Baszile (Queen Sugar,) and Nate Marshall (Wild Hundreds). The Legacy Awards has honored more than 400 writers since 2002. The annual program was the brainchild of the late award-winning novelist E. Lynn Harris, who recognized that work by Black authors deserved more attention. Free public readings and events since 2014 have afforded thousands of readers in Washington, D.C., the opportunity to engage with hundreds of talented Black authors.

Through a social justice lens, our work provides the necessary services, supports and opportunities for Black writers seeking to publish work within a publishing industry that has traditionally failed to publish work by Black writers proportionate to their population. We also recognize that our social activism aids in disrupting systems that hinder Black writers from having access to certain opportunities—from writing residencies to participation in quality writing workshops and craft talks. LEARN MORE AT HURSTONWRIGHT.ORG