Multicultural writers conference leaders

(as of 4/30/09)

Multicultural Writers Conference home page

WORKSHOP LEADERS

Jennifer Baszile
Memoir Writing Workshop Leader

Jennifer Baszile is the author of The Black Girl Next Door: a Memoir (Touchstone, Simon & Schuster), the story of her coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive southern California suburb in the 1970s and 1980s. As the author chronicles her girlhood, she recounts the history of the generation of Americans who sacrificed their childhoods to make integration real. Booklist called The Black Girl Next Door, "An absorbing look behind the facade of one black family's striving for integration and the American dream." The Black Girl Next Door has received favorable reviews in The New York Times and was named an Editor's Choice selection. Reviews have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Ebony, and Essence.

Jennifer Baszile earned a bachelor's degree in history from Columbia University, and a master's from Princeton. While earning a Ph.D. in history at Princeton, she received the Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, among other prizes. She went on to be the first African-American woman to teach history at Yale University, as an assistant professor of history, American and African-American studies, 1999-2007.

Jennifer has appeared on public radio and television. She has been honored with the Columbia College Women Alumnae Achievement Award, the Yale College Poorvu Award for Outstanding Teaching, and the 2008 Strength Award from the Mixed Magic Theatre for The Black Girl Next Door. Ebony magazine recognized her as one of the Thirty Leaders of the Future.

Watch Dr. Baszile speak about The Black Girl Next Door.

Emily Bernard
Personal Essay Writing Workshop Leader

Emily Bernard is associate professor of English and ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from the American Studies Department at Yale University. Dr. Bernard has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W.E.B. du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, and the Ford Foundation. Her personal essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Oxford American Magazine, Best American Essays, Best African-American Essays, and Best of Creative Non-Fiction. Her books include Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (2001), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship (2004), which was chosen by the New York Public Library for its Book for the Teen Age 2006 list. During the 2008-2009 academic year, Professor Bernard is the James Weldon Johnson Fellow in African-American Studies at the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Her upcoming book, White Shadows: Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance, is scheduled to be published by Yale University Press in 2009.

Read Dr. Bernard's essay, Teaching the N-Word, published in The American Scholar, August 2005. Teaching the N-Word

Reginald O'Hare Gibson
Poetry Writing Workshop Leader

Reginald O'Hare Gibson received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New England College. He has performed, taught, and lectured at universities, theaters, and other venues in seven countries. He most recently appeared in Havana, Cuba and in Monfalcone, Italy where he received the 2008 Absolute Poetry Award. Reginald and his work appear in the New Line Cinema's Love Jones, a film based on events in his life. Reginald has been featured numerous times on National Public Radio (NPR), and has been nominated for a Boston Emmy Award for his feature on WGBH-2's Art Close-Up. He received the Walker Scholarship for poetry from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and is a Chernin Center for the Arts Writer's Fellow. Reginald's work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Harvard's Divinity Magazine and The Iowa Review. His volume of poems, Storms Beneath the Skin received the Golden Pen Award.

Read Mr. Gibson's poem, The Red Cadillac, published in Poetry magazine, July 2006. The Red Cadillac

Kim McLarin
Fiction Writing Workshop Leader

Kim McLarin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels, Taming It Down, Meeting of the Waters, and Jump at the Sun. Ms. McLarin also is co-author with Ilyasah Shabazz of the memoir, Growing Up X. Jump at the Sun was chosen as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. It was also nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and chosen by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book. Ms. McLarin is a former staff writer for The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Greensboro News & Record, and The Associated Press. She previously taught at Northeastern University. Ms. McLarin hosts Basic Black, WGBH's long-running television program devoted to African-American themes.

Get to know Ms. McLarin as she talks about her role as moderator of Basic Black.

PANELISTS

Writers and industry professionals Eve Bridburg, Johnny Diaz, David Emblidge, Daniellle Legros Georges, Thomas Glave, Helen Elain Lee, Francisco Stork, and Lane Zacharay will lead panel discussions covering:

• Finding a Literary Agent
• Publishing Your Work
• Finding Community as a Writer

Multicultural Writers Conference home page

Credits
Jennifer Baszile video-simonandschuster.com/multimedia; Teaching the N-Word-theamericanscholar.org; The Red Cadillac-poetryfoundation.org; Get to Know Kim McLarin-wgbh.org