The National Book Foundation (NBF) has announced that two National Book Award-winning authors will be coming to Roanoke as part of NBF Presents programming, made possible by a three-year $900,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
NBF Presents, a moniker under which all of the Foundation’s public programs fall, will launch its summer event series with libraries that have also served as local partners for NBF’s Book Rich Environments program. As part of NBF Presents: Summer with the National Book Awards, the Foundation is creating new relationships with these partners, reaching an even wider swath of readers in their communities by sending National Book Awards–honored authors to library branches in Roanoke, as well as Akron, OH; Allen County, IN; New Bedford, MA; and Sarasota, FL.
The new Melrose Branch Library will host National Book Award winners Ibram X. Kendi and Justin Phillip Reed at an event Thursday, Aug. 29, titled Indecent Histories.
These acclaimed writers will discuss histories of inequity and discrimination, contemporary identity, and what community looks like for writers and people of color. This event will be moderated by Douglas Jackson, founder of Book City Roanoke and will begin at 6:30 PM. A limited number of free titles will be available for attendees.
Ibram X. Kendi is the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He is Professor of History and International Relations, and an Ideas Columnist at The Atlantic. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a New York Times Best Seller.
At 34 years old, he was the youngest ever winner of the NBA for Nonfiction. Stamped from the Beginning was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and it was nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a NAACP Image Award. Kendi has published essays in numerous periodicals, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. His next book, How To Be An Antiracist, will be published on August 13th.
Justin Phillip Reed is the winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry for Indecency, which Library Journal called “one of a kind brilliant.” The National Book Award poetry jury celebrated the book as “political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful.” His poetry appears in African American Review, Best American Essays, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian and elsewhere.
