Words to Our Now: Thomas Glave on Tour

Fiction writer and essayist Thomas Glave is on tour in support of his new book Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (University of Minnesota Press). Glave is also the author of the short story collection Whose Song? And Other Songs. Glave’s work is, in a word, provocative—he aims to provoke real change in a world increasingly given to real forms of terror. And Glave has known terror first hand, given his work as a founding member of Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays(J-FLAG).

One of the most provocative essays in Words to Our Now is “Regarding a Black Male Monica Lewinsky, Anal Penetration, and Bill Clinton’s Sacred White Anus.” I was fortunate to be on a panel with Glave a few years ago when he presented an earlier version of this essay, to an audience that was stunned silent. All of Glave’s work has that kind of power.

Here’s a recent conversation between Glave and Masani Alexis De Veaux. Glave’s West Coast tour stops are below.


LOS ANGELES, CA:
Lucy Florence Coffee House, Nov 26, 2005
6:00 PM
3351 West 43rd Street
Los Angeles
Tel. 323 293 1256

LOS ANGELES, CA:
A Different Light Bookstore, Nov 27, 2005
7:00 PM
8853 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood/Los Angeles
Tel. 310 854 6601
www.ADLbooks.com

SAN FRANCISCO, CA:
City Lights Bookstore, NOV 29, 2005
7:00 PM
261 Columbus Avenue
Tel 415 362 8193
San Francisco
www.citylights.com
CONTACT: Peter Taravalis, peter@citylights.com

SAN FRANCISCO, CA:
Alexander Book Company, NOV 30, 2005
12:30 PM
50 Second Street
San Francisco
Tel: 415 495 2992
http://alexanderbook.booksense.com
CONTACT: Bernard Henderson

SAN FRANCISCO, CA:
A Different Light Bookstore, NOV 30, 2005
7:00 PM
489 Castro Street
San Francisco
Tel 415 431 0891
CONTACT: Scott LaForce, ADLSFEvents@aol.com

STANFORD, CA:
Stanford University Bookstore, DEC 1, 2005
6:00 PM
White Plaza, Stanford
Tel 650 329 1217
Tel 800 533 2670
CONTACT: Michelle Carson, m.Carson@bookstore.stanford.org
www.stanfordbookstore.com

OAKLAND, CA:
Marcus Books, DEC 2, 2005
6:30 PM
3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way
Oakland
Tel: 510 652 2344
CONTACT: Blanche Richardson, blancherich@aol.com

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde Wins 2005 Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award for Non-Fiction

Zami originated a new discursive space for more complex renderings of black women’s lives…With this reframed identity at its center…Zami posed Lorde’s identity and sexuality as fluid aspects of her transnational blackness, rooted both in migration between ‘there’ and ‘here’ and in the ‘there.

—Alexis De Veaux


Alexis De Veaux’s book Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde just recently won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Non-Fiction. Other winners include Maryse Conde who won the award for fiction for Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?, Chris Abani who one the award for best fiction debut (Graceland) and Tracey Price-Thompson who won for contemporary fiction. The awards are handed out every year by the Hurston/Wright Foundation whose mission is to “develop, nurture and sustain the world community of writers of African descent.”

I’ve known Alexis for 13 years—she was my dissertation director—but even more importantly she has been an incredible role model for me and has largely been responsible for any claims I make on a black feminist manhood. I am so happy that she is getting all the recognition she deserves for her thoughtful, loving, and critical examination of Audre Lorde.

“[HE] MAJOR”

Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

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JHF on All Things Considered

JHF on the Diane Rehm Show

JHF on News and Notes with Ed Gordon

Jonathan Yardley (The Washington Post) on Mirror to America

JHFC: A Personal Journey Into America's Past (The Washington Post)