This event will be held in-person only, offsite at Harold Washington Library Center, 400 South State Street, Chicago. It is free and open to all, with no advance registration required.
Kai Parker, author of City of Black Souls: Chicago, Ethiopianism, and the Black Apocalyptic Imagination, and Reginal Blount, Director of the Center for the Church and Black Experience at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary will discuss intersections of faith and social change in twentieth-century Chicago.
The third American Writers Festival is presented by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library. The free literary festival will be held at multiple stages inside the Harold Washington Library Center and feature a variety of leading contemporary authors, poets, artists, and playwrights. The Festival consists of discussion panels and author signings with prominent writers across various genres, including children’s and young adult fiction, science fiction, history, biography, poetry, and satire, who will share insights into their craft. Participating writers will address their perspectives on many of today’s most timely and controversial topics including immigration, book censorship, racism, and equality through themes within their literature.
This program is part of Beyond Belief: Religion and Social Change, a wide-ranging Newberry initiative running through 2029. It is generously supported by Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
Speakers
Kai Parker, Assistant Professor of African American Religious History at the University of Virginia, examines how apocalyptic and messianic strains of Black faith have inspired Black social movements, cultural production, and intellectual thought while illuminating the affinities and tensions between conceptions of redemption and freedom. His research combines archival methods of history with conceptual insights drawn from theology as well as Black studies’ engagements with phenomenology.
Reginald Blount, Murray H. Leiffer Associate Professor of Formation, Leadership and Culture and Director of the Center for the Church and the Black Experience at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, has research interests in African American identity formation, adolescent and young adult identity formation, Christian education theory, Christian education and the Black church, and African/African American spirituality. He is the author of Let Your Light Shine: Mobilizing for Justice with Children and Youth.
Cost and Registration
This program is free and open to all, with no advance registration required.
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