Clik here to view.
A Century of James Baldwin
100 years ago, on August 2, 1924 James Baldwin, né James Arthur Jones, was born in New York City. Needless to say, he would grow to become one of America’s most important and beloved writers, thinkers,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 reasons to love James Baldwin, in honor of his 100th birthday.
James Baldwin would have turned a hundred years old today. There are far more than a hundred reasons to celebrate the man. A brilliant, complicated author and one of our most fearsome public...
View ArticleClik here to view.
James Baldwin and the Roots of Black-Palestinian Solidarity
Few writers can be considered as poignantly relevant decades after their passing as James Baldwin. The Harlem-born writer was often considered ahead of his time, a figure who managed to cut through the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Hidden Story of Black History and Black Lives Before the Civil Rights...
In April 1976, my twenty-seven-year-old uncle, Craig Baskerville, made a tape recording of his great-uncle, Thomas Holcomb. The tape is scratchy, and Lady, the family dog, keeps barking in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inside James Baldwin’s Fraught Relationship With His Stepfather
Baldwin describes how his father’s illness led to him “hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world which had despised him.” As...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Did You Know That James Baldwin Wrote for Children, Too?
In rare archival footage, James Baldwin strolls down the sidewalk of 71st Street, surrounded by a band of close-knit family members. Baldwin is gleaming with his classic, wide-open, toothy smile as his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Farid Matuk on Mirroring, Poetic Artifice, and Complicating Sensuality in Verse
Lit Hub is excited to feature another entry in a new series from Poets.org: “enjambments,” a monthly interview series with new and established poets. This month, they spoke to Farid Matuk. Farid Matuk...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Community Means as a Queer Black Writer
In the spring of 1990, poised at the brink of graduation from Morehouse College, I came out to my girlfriend. A year earlier, she’d chuckled when I declared my desire that we date. Not that she was an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Schomburg Library is turning 100 this year—and throwing an epic rager.
On May 8, 1925—a hundred years ago tomorrow—one of the country’s largest collections of Black arts, literature, and history was born out of a Harlem brownstone. Now called the Schomburg Research Center...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Literary Alchemy: On Fusing Research and Film Techniques to Write a Novel
The spark for my novel, Gulf, began when I was living in Abu Dhabi and working for NYU. A friend of mine who was the Director of Equality Now, a global women’s rights organization, enlisted my help to...
View Article