James Baldwin's Vibrant Legacy
James
Baldwin would have turned 80 on August 2 and we salute him in this reading
and in one to come in 2005.
Tarrytown resident and multi-genre writer and editor, Sol Stein, had a unique relationship with Baldwin. They were classmates at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, life-long friends, and Stein edited Baldwin's ground-breaking 1955 book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, now a classic in American literature. Stein's just-published book, Native Sons, documents the story of their creative partnership through recently uncovered letters, photos, inscriptions and a memoir of their friendship.
Randall
Kenan was born in Brooklyn, raised in rural North Carolina,
and is currently an associate professor of English at University of NC
- Chapel Hill. His first novel, A Visitation of Spirits, was published
in 1989 when Kenan was 26. A story collection, Let the Dead Bury Their
Dead, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for
Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and
was a New York Times Notable Book in 1992. Other books include
a YA biography of Baldwin (1993), and Walking on Water: Black American
Lives at the Turn of the 21st Century (1999), nominated for the Southern
Book Award. A winner of many prestigious awards himself (Guggenheim, Whiting,
Sherwood Anderson, Dos Passos, etc.), he is one of the 2004 fiction judges
for the National Book Award to be announced later this fall.
All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale Foundation; the David G. Taft Foundation; the Orchard Foundation; and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.