Important reading by literary journalist

Isabel Wilkerson is a wonderful public speaker and a fine writer who knows how to tell a story. I highly recommend her and her book. She would make a great story for your blogs. I know this is a Saturday, but give her a chance. You’ll be glad you did.

 

An Afternoon with Isabel Wilkerson

Saturday, February 23 | 2 PM
Julia Ideson Building | Auditorium
550 McKinney St., 77002 | 832-393-1662

Presented in partnership with the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC), join us as Houston Public Library hosts the annual HMAAC Spring Literary Lecture, featuring Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson discusses The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.

About the Book: In the tradition of works by Taylor Branch and J. Anthony Lukas, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson chronicles a watershed event in American history: the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West, from World War I through the 1970s—through the stories of three individuals and their families. Over a decade in the writing and research, and drawing on archival materials and over 1,200 interviews, The Warmth of Other Suns traces the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster, from their difficult beginnings in the South, to their critical decisions to leave behind all they know and look for a better life in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

 

Photo by Joe Henson

About the Author: Isabel Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. Wilkerson also won a George Polk Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her research into the Great Migration, and she was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor at Emory University. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. During the Great Migration, her parents journeyed from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., where she was born and reared. The Warmth of Other Suns is her first book.