Noted Authors Give Reading At Emory For National Black Arts Festival, Opening of Black Arts Movement Exhibition

WHO: Authors Thulani Davis and Eugene B. Redmond reading from their works, followed by a reception.

WHAT: The readings mark the opening of an exhibition "The Black Arts Movement in Poetry and Literature: Print Culture of the 1960s and 1970s" in special collections of Emoryıs Woodruff Library. Part of the National Black Arts Festival.

WHEN: 4 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 2

WHERE: Joseph Jones Room, Robert W. Woodruff Library, 540 Asbury Circle, Emory.

COST: Free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Fishburne parking deck across from the library. For a campus map, go on-line to www.emory.edu/MAP/. For more information, call 404-727-6887.

Emory University will host a joint reading by acclaimed writers Thulani Davis and Eugene B. Redmond as part of the National Black Arts Festival. The readings will be followed by a reception to mark the opening of the exhibition "The Black Arts Movement in Poetry and Literature: Print Culture of the 1960s and 1970s," drawn in part from materials donated to Emory by Davis.

Thulani Davis is an acclaimed novelist, poet, playwright, lyricist and librettist. She is author of "1959" (1992) and "Malcolm X, the Great Photographs" (1993). She published two volumes of poetry, "All the Renegade Ghosts Arise" (1978) and "Playing the Changes" (1985), and wrote the libretto for the opera "X: the Life and Times of Malcolm X" (1986) by Anthony Davis. She joined a handful of co-writers as Grammy Award-winners for best album notes for "Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings" (1992).

Also a long-time journalist for Village Voice, Davisı most recent works include the libretto for the opera "Amistad" (1997), also by Anthony Davis, the novel "Maker of Saints" (1996), and several plays, including "Everybodyıs Ruby: Story of a Murder in Florida" (1998).

Eugene B. Redmond, currently a professor at Southern Illinois University, is an important figure in the black arts movement of the1960s and 1970s, developing his versatile talents as poet, playwright, critic and editor. Born in 1937 in East St. Louis, Ill., Redmond was orphaned at age nine, then raised by his grandmother and "a group of neighborhood fathers." His interests in writing and oral delivery stemmed from his early involvement with his high school newspaper and yearbook and with his performances in school and church plays.

Redmondıs first volume of poetry, "A Tale of Two Toms, or Tom-Tom" was published in 1968, followed by "A Tale of Time and Toilet Tissue" (1969), "Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars" (1970), "River of Bones and Flesh and Blood" (1971), "Songs from an Afro/Phone" (1972), "In a Time of Rain and Desire: New Love Poems" (1973), "Consider Loneliness as These Things" (1973), and "The Eye in the Ceiling: Poems" (1991). He also has written several plays and television screenplays and edited works by his late friend, Henry Dumas, with whom he co-founded Black River Writers Publishing Company. Redmond has said of his own work: "At the very center of this writerıs life and work is the desire and struggle for Black self-determination and respect for basic humanity."

The exhibition, curated by Emory graduate student Janell Hobson and Emoryıs African-American collections bibliographer Randall K. Burkett, will be drawn from the William P. French Collection of Black-Published Poetry, and a collection of rare black-published literary journals donated to Emoryıs special collections by Thulani Davis. For more information, call 404-727-6887.

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