Better Through Books: Virtual Author Talk with Dr. Jerald Walker

Thursday, March 257:00—8:00 PMOnline

Join us for this unique author talk as part of our Better Through Books: Healing Community Together Community Read as we hear from Emerson College's Dr. Jerald Walker on his most recent collection of essays, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Jerald Walker has published in magazines such as Creative Nonfiction, The Missouri Review, The Harvard Review, Mother Jones, The Iowa Review, and The Oxford American, and he has been widely anthologized, including five times in The Best American Essays. Walker is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the 2011 PEN New England/L.L. Winship Award for Nonfiction and named a Best Memoir of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, and The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult. His latest book, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays was a Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction. He has received fellowships from the James Michener Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The National Book Award judges made the following remarks on Walker's work, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays: "In these absorbing essays, Jerald Walker adds race to the commonplace (a little girl helping her younger brother with his homework, a job interview, a family dining out, a teenager crashing the family car) and shows us something knotty, fraught, and unforgettable, not just about race and the commonplace, “living while black,” but about living while human. Walker is furious and funny. He is talking to himself about his life and allows us to listen in."

Registration is required; Zoom information will be sent in your registration confirmation.

Thanks to our community co-sponsors and the Friends of the Belmont Public Library to make this amazing series of events possible.

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