Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021
10:30-11:45 a.m.

Jason Reynolds

Jason Reynolds is an American author who writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audiences, including Ghost, a National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature. He is the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (2020-2021). A native of Washington, D.C., Reynolds began writing poetry at 9 years old, and is the recipient of a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, an NAACP Image Award, and multiple Coretta Scott King Award honors.

 

Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Saeed Jones

As a black gay kid growing up in Texas in the 1990s, poet Saeed Jones remembers getting negative messages about his identity from every aspect of his life. In his coming-of-age memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, Jones reflects on his struggle to embrace his identity. He tackles the questions of race and gender. How We Fight for Our Lives was the winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. Jones’ accomplishments also include his debut poetry collection, When the Only Light Is Fire and his second collection, Prelude to Bruise. He is a winner of The Joyce Osterwell Award for Poetry from the PEN Literary Awards, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Award for Literature, and he was a nominee for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Jones lives in Columbus, Ohio.

 

Friday, Oct. 15
12:30-1:30 p.m.

Fobazi Ettarh

Fobazi Ettarh is currently the Undergraduate Success Librarian at Rutgers Newark.  Creator of the concept Vocational Awe, her research is concerned with the relationships and tensions between the espoused values of librarianship and the realities present in the experiences of marginalized librarians and users. She also studies equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries, in particular, ways in which social and organizational infrastructures privilege the works of certain groups over others. Ettarh is the author of the article “Vocational Awe: The Lies We Tell Ourselves” and the blog “WTF is A Radical Librarian,” which examines issues at the intersections of librarianship, education, activism, and social justice.

 

 

 

 

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