Home Part of States Newsroom
Brief
Greensboro Bound Literary Festival to feature Nikole Hannah-Jones, panel on journalism and activism

Share

Greensboro Bound Literary Festival to feature Nikole Hannah-Jones, panel on journalism and activism

May 02, 2022 | 3:00 pm ET
By Joe Killian
Share
Default north carolina image

Book lovers, mark your calendars: The Greensboro Bound Literary Festival will bring more than 50 authors to the Gate City May 19-22 to discuss their work and its inspirations.

Greensboro Bound Literary Festival to feature Nikole Hannah-Jones, panel on journalism and activism

Among the most prominent of the featured authors will be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who will speak at an event at N.C. A&T as part of the school’s series on the racial history of the city and the practice of redlining.

Hannah-Jones’s panel will bring her to the nation’s largest historically black college or university (HBCU) nearly a year after a political controversy led her to choose Howard University over a tenured position at UNC-Chapel Hill. Hannah-Jones is expected to discuss the fight for an up-or-down vote on her tenure at her alma-mater in addition to her New York Times bestselling books, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story and The 1619 Project: Born on the Water.

Greensboro Bound Literary Festival to feature Nikole Hannah-Jones, panel on journalism and activism
Nikole Hannah-Jones will appear in conversation with Dr. Jelani Favors of N.C. A&T.

Hannh-Jones will appear in conversation with Dr. Jelani Favors, the Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor in N.C. A&T’s Department of History and Political Science.

Favors’ own award-winning book, Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, examines the ways in which HBCUs like A&T have always been incubators of activism and social change. Favors calls that tradition a “second curriculum” beyond the classroom. From educating national civil rights leaders, attorneys and legislators who beat back racist laws and policies to fostering activists like the A&T Four who sparked the national sit-in movement, Favors said HBCUs have always been at the forefront of difficult social conversations.

On May 22 N.C. Policy Watch’s own investigative reporter Joe Killian will host a panel on journalism and activism featuring Tara Green (Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson) Tessie Castillo (Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row) and Lynden Harris (RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW: Life Stories from America’s Death Row).

Journalist Phoebe Zerwick (Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt) will appear on a separate panel May 21. Policy Watch recently spoke with Zerwick, director of the journalism program at Wake Forest University, about her book. Listen to that conversation here.

More information on the free festival, including time and location for individual panels, available here.