The Twelfth National Black Writers Conference “Reconstructing the Master Narrative”

The Center for Black Literature Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary at the National Black Writers Conference

Date: Thurs., March 27– Sun., March 30, 2014
Location: Medgar Evers College, CUNY
1650 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

For more information call The Center for Black Literature at 718-804-8883 or email them atwriters@mec.cuny.edu

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott

In an interview with Bill Moyers in March of 1990 for his television series A World of Ideas, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison defines the master narrative as whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. In other words, the master narrative is created by those in power. Thus, the master narrative is shaped by a certain viewpoint. In analyzing the master narrative found in literature, we examine what texts are present and which ones are omitted. It is important that we consciously take the steps to ensure that the master narrative encompasses the Black literary tradition—past and present. The National Black Writers Conference (NBWC) offers us an opportunity to present to the public the complexity of the texts produced by Black writers throughout the African Diaspora.

The 2014 NBWC theme of “Black Writers Reconstructing the Master Narrative” builds on previous NBWCs and takes into account the need to expose the general public to the vast range of texts that Black writers throughout the diaspora are producing. Using this theme as the premise of this public gathering of writers, students, literary agents, editors and the general public will have an opportunity to attend panels, roundtables and readings, participate in workshops, and take in performances over the four days of the Conference. Dr. Myrlie Evers-Williams is the Honorary Chair of the 2014 National Black Writers Conference. The honorees for the Twelfth NBWC are:Maryse Condé, Walter Mosley, Quincy Troupe, Derek Walcott, and posthumously to Margaret Burroughs.

The National Black Writers Conference is a public program that will provide writers, scholars, literary professionals, students, and the general public with a forum for expanding their knowledge and reading of Black literature and for engaging in dynamic and spirited conversations, panel discussions, readings, workshops, and performances on conference themes and on future trends in the literature of Black writers.

The Conference will also pay tribute to and celebrate Black writers who have made significant contributions to the literary canon and will provide emerging writers with opportunities to improve their writing craft. Conference panels, roundtables, and featured speeches will be streamed and videotaped. Selected proceedings will be published.

Angela Davis Featured Speaker

“Audre Lorde: A Burst of Light Symposium ” Featuring Keynote Speaker Angela Davis

Free and Open to the Public
Date: Saturday, March 22, 2014
Time: 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Medgar Evers College, Founders Auditorium
1650 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the Center for Black Literature will partner with The Du Bois-Bunche Center for Public Policy, MEC’s English Department and the Center for Women’s Development to pay tribute to the legacy of the feminist poet and writer Audre Lorde. The program will focus on promoting dialogue concerned with the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and sexual identity in Lorde’s works. Guest participants include activist and scholar Angela Davis; Steven Fullwood, assistant curator of the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and asha bandele, human rights advocate, poet, journalist, and the award-winning author. During the program, there will also be a tribute to Esther Cooper Jackson for her leadership as an editor and publisher of Freedomways Journal.

Click here to RSVP for the Audre Lorde: A Burst of Light Symposium”.

Wade and Cheryl Hudson

2014 NBWC Youth Day Program

Date: Friday, March 21, 2014
Time: 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Founders Auditorium
1650 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

The Twelfth National Black Writers Conference will host a day of programs geared toward young readers. There will be presentations and readings during an Elementary School Program, coordinated by Just Us Books (9:30 to noon).

Just Us Books’ Youth Literacy Program
9:30 a.m.: Welcome: Coordinated by Wade Hudson & Cheryl Willis Hudson, authors and founders of Just Us Books Inc.
9:41 a.m.: Giveaway Contest
10:00 a.m. Presentation by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, author of Ruth and the Green Book andBelle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend
10:31 a.m.: Students Reading their Poems & Giveaway Contest
11:00 a.m. Presentation with Jerry Craft, author/illustrator, Mama’s Boyz cartoon series andHillary’s Big Business Adventure and Looking to the Clouds for Daddy; and illustrator George Ford.
11:46 a.m.: – Noon: Giveaway Contest & Wrap-up
1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Middle School Program with Greg Walker; and a High School Program coordinated by Nina Angela Mercer
Author and poets DuEwa Frazier and Reginald Harris will share poetry and fiction and lead workshops.

Pre-Registration for the 4 day conference is $65. This price does not include the VIP Reception or Talkshops. If you are a student, faculty member or a senior the 4 day conference is discounted to $30. Admission to the conference for one day is $25 or ($15 for student, faculty or seniors). These prices are valid until March 21, 2014. Register here.

Elders Writing Program

3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. (*subject to change)
Location: Founders Auditorium
Medgar Evers College Campus
1650 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

Members of the Elders Writers Workshop Presentation, Sponsored by JOK Workshop and Poets & Writers.

jessica Care moore

2014 NBWC Poetry Cafe

6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Location: Central Brooklyn Public Library
Dweck Center
10 Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11238

This year’s Poetry Café is dedicated to the memory of Amiri Baraka, cosponsored by the Central Brooklyn Public Library and coordinated by Wendy Robinson and Tai Allen. Featured authors and poets include Tony Medina, jessica Care moore, Ed Mabrey, and the works of emerging poets.

Tour of African Burial Ground

10 a.m.
Limited to 60 people; tour led by T. Rasul Murray 290 Broadway, N.Y.

Twelve Years a Slave Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984)

Films Celebrating Activism in Black Literature

Noon to 4:00 p.m.
Location: Medgar Evers College
Founders Auditorium
1650 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

A selection of short films inspired by and with literary themes. Hosted by African Voices/Reel Sisters, the film presentation will include a screening of Gordon Parks’ Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, which premiered in 1984 and was based on the same book as the award-winning movie 12 Years a Slave.

4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Film panel discussion with African Voices/Reel Sisters

A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott

“The Search for Self in Caribbean Literature: Past, Present, and Future.”
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Founders Auditorium

A Special Literary Event featuring Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. For this special literary event, poet and playwright Derek Walcott will be joined by the Trinidad-born poet Mervyn Taylor and St. Lucian poet and producer Adrian Augier to participate in a program titled “The Search for Self in Caribbean Literature: Past, Present, and Future.” The conversation will focus on Walcott’s writing life and explore the themes of identity, memory, belonging and spirituality in his work and in Caribbean literature. This program is presented in collaboration with the Center for Black Literature, the Caribbean Research Center and the Caribbean Cultural Theatre Inc. The program is supported with a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.

Click to attend the conversation with Derek Walcott $10 Donation

2014 NBWC Concert: Words Meet Music

Jazz concert featuring pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs and recording artists and poets Dasan Ahanu and Tai Allen, and Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets.
9:00 p.m.
Venue: Olivia
1073 Atlantic Ave.
Brooklyn, New York 11238
Click to RSVP - $10 Donation

The NBWC Conference Reading Series

Medgar Evers College, Edison O. Jackson Auditorium
Academic Complex Building (AB1)
1638 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

Author readings sponsored by the African American Literature Book Club, the Brooklyn Literary Council, the Pan-African Literary Forum, and the Center for Black Literature. 2014 NBWC John Oliver Killens Reading Series

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ

Brooklyn Literary Council
Noon–12:25 p.m. Elsie Augustave, author of The RovingTree;
12:25 p.m.–12:50 p.m. Morowa Yejidé, author of Time of the Locust;
12:50 p.m. –1:15 p.m. Angel Nafis, BlackGirl Mansion

African American Literature Book Club (AALBC.com)
1:20 p.m. –1:45 p.m. Kwei Quartey, author of Murder at Cape Three Points;
1:45 p.m. –2:10 p.m. Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Black Star Nairobi.

In his speech earlier this weak, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his actions by explicitly citing the US disregard for international in recent decades. "They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right," he said. "They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle ‘If you are not with us, you are against us.’” (Photo: the Presidential Press and Information Office/ Kremlin)Eleven years ago this week, the U.S. decided to sidestep international law in its rush to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq. In doing so, charge critics, it has helped open a pandora's box of imperial lawlessness that is now rearing its head in Ukraine.

Amid warnings that what's taking place as Russia battles the U.S. and European nations over a new government in Kiev and Crimea's vote to officially secede from Ukraine is the beginning of a new 'Cold War,' many observers have called out western hypocrisy when it comes to the White House and Downing Street pointing fingers at the Kremlin.

"In an era in which exceptionalism has become the norm, where the cavalier disregard of domestic and/or global objections is considered politically acceptable, and where powerful nations can exercise a free hand in determining the future of less powerful ones when strategic interests are involved."—Randall Amster, Georgetown University

Taking that point further on Thursday, Randall Amster, director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University, argues in a pieceat Common Dreams that despite all the rhetoric, sanctions, and threats of further "punishment" coming from Washington, the missing analysis about Ukraine is how it represents a kind of "foreign policy blowback" resulting from "the US-led wars and interventions of recent years" in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amster points out that by ignoring international law when it suited their own interests, the U.S. and U.K. set the stage for others (at least those with the requisite military and political might) to follow suit:

As many pointed out at the time, the invasion of Iraq in particular foretold a world wracked by disregard for international norms and defined by the mercenary pursuits of national self-interest. In setting a template for the policy engagements to follow, this archetype of adventurism ushered in an era in which exceptionalism has become the norm, where the cavalier disregard of domestic and/or global objections is considered politically acceptable, and where powerful nations can exercise a free hand in determining the future of less powerful ones when strategic interests are involved. It would be hard to conceive of a more pointed version of realpolitik, and the term is doubly poignant in light of the outcomes we are seeing today.
Russia’s rhetorical reliance on misguided Western policies does little more than render concrete that which has already been known and deployed by powerful interests for decades, if not longer. But the invocation of recent US-led forays and the specific use of the word “exceptionalism” in Russian discourse add a dimension that is deeply troubling for the future prospects of peace. By making realpolitik more, well, real, the annexation of Crimea is less likely to draw a military response from the West than it is to elicit wider forms of emulation. In abdicating their already-tenuous hold on moral legitimacy in international affairs, the US and its allies have eroded one of the last potential bastions against the imminent realization of a world dominated by strategic resource acquisition as a function of security.

In an editorial by The Nation posted Wednesday, the magazine's editors also invoke US transgressions in the context of Ukraine. "Yes, Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea trespasses on international law," they write, but it's "difficult to bear US officials’ invocation of a principle that Washington itself has often violated (see, most recently, Kosovo and Iraq, the latter now marking the eleventh anniversary of an illegal US invasion and occupation)."

And author and historian Howard Friel, also at Common Dreams, defies the western media's dominant anti-Putin line not to defend Russian motives or actions, but to cast a light on U.S. violations that now make it impossible for Washington to stand as a moral authority on issues of international law. In a string of rhetorical questions, Friel asks:

Did Putin invade Iraq and destroy that society?
Did Putin lie to the American people about the reasons for that invasion?
Did Putin kill one million Iraqis?
Did Putin spend $1 trillion of the American public’s money on the Iraq invasion?
Did Putin invade Afghanistan?
Did he spend $700 billion on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan?
Does Putin have a “kill list” to murder suspected terrorists without due process and outside any field of battle?

According to The Nation editors, the only thing that can now resolve the crisis in Ukraine and the brewing 'Cold War' redux between Russia and the western powers is a true and meaningful focus on diplomacy. Threats of military escalation must be averted, they say, and the "war parties" on all sides must be pushed aside in the name of a peaceful agreement going forward.

And while Amster agrees that a negotiated settlement should also be the focus, he argues strongly that time should be spent reflecting on how previous examples of cast-off international obligations—now the "modus operandi of powerful interests across the globe"—have brought us to this point.