Join Ben Steelman of the StarNews and one of the most distinguished African American authors of today, Randall Kenan, to discuss his most recent achievement, a collection of his essays titled The Fire This Time, which includes a tribute to legend James Baldwin.
Praise for The Fire This Time
"Insightful, taut, elegantly written...One cannot read this book without coming away with feelings of hope. We may continue to stumble at times in what Wynton Marsalis has called this dance we've been doing since the founding of the republic. But reading Randall Kenan, one knows somehow that the dance is worth each step.
- The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC)
"The book is unapologetically confrontational about the ways in which the Dream of racial equality continues to be elusive."
- News and Observer
"A terrific homage to James Baldwin's great essay,"
- The Boston Phoenix
Monday, February 9 at 7 pm
MC Erny Gallery, 254 N. Front Street, 3rd Floor
About the Author: Randall Kenan was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Chinquapin, NC. He graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1985. From 1985-89 Kenan worked on the editorial staff of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. From there he taught at several colleges and universities, including Vassar, Duke and Columbia. He is currently an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at his alma mater. Kenan is the author of several acclaimed books including A Visitation of Spirits, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, and Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Kenan has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Prize and many other honors. For more information about Kenan and his work please click here