WELCOME TO THE HVWC CALENDAR: home of all our upcoming readings, events and workshops. You can view by list or calendar (see right menu to choose). Click the colored tabs below to show only specific options. Our workshops run as multi-session series or one-day “intensives.” Note, we list the multi-session courses on the first day they meet only. The full dates of the session are described in the course descriptions. You would need to scroll back to the start date if you needed to enroll for something already underway. But do let us know if you want to join something in midstream since we need the blessing of the instructor. Questions? Email us.
Workshops – This category encompasses all one-day and multi-week classes, whether in person or via Zoom.
Readings – Our readings are in many different genres and take place in person, on Zoom, or both!
HVWC Recurring Events – This category encompasses such regular favorites as Open Mic, Open Write, and Submission Sunday.
Special Events – These other creative experiences are sure to interest our creative community!
Fiction Reading with Nana Brew-Hammond (via Zoom)
July 31 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Free – $25.00
Nana Brew-Hammond will read from her new novel, My Parents’ Marriage, book is about a woman trying to redefine what marriage means to her in the shadow of her loving, charismatic, self-made, philandering father, her mother, and his other wife. Set in the ‘70s between Accra, Ghana and Aneho, Togo, and Brooklyn, Bronx and Buffalo, New York, this novel is a meditation on what it can mean to put two (or more) disparate entities and histories together–and what it can require to break free of harmful generational cycles.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter. Named among the best books of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, and The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, BLUE is on the 2023-2024 Texas Bluebonnet Master List, has been honored with the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in the writing of non-fiction for children, and is an NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature for Children. Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited RELATIONS: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices. Kirkus Reviews called the anthology “smart, generous…a true gift” in its STARRED review.
Her short fiction for adult readers is included in the anthologies Accra Noir edited by Nana-Ama Danquah, Africa39 edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, New Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby, Everyday People edited by Jennifer Baker, and Woman’s Work edited by Michelle Sewell, among others. Her writing has also appeared in Now2, African Writing, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Sunday Salon.
Brew-Hammond was a 2019 Edward Albee Foundation Fellow, a 2018 Pa Gya! Literary Festival Guest Author, a 2018 Ake Arts and Book Festival Guest Author, a 2018 Hobart Festival of Women Writers Guest Author, a 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar, a 2016 Hedgbrook Writer-in-Residence, a 2015 Rhode Islad Writers Colony Writer-in-Residence, and in both 2015 and 2014, she was shortlisted for a Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Also noted for her personal style, Brew-Hammond’s fashion sense has been captured by New York Magazine, Essence Magazine, BFA, TheSartorialist.com, Paper Magazine, and The New York Times, among many other outlets. Recently, she co-founded the made-in-Ghana lifestyle line EXIT 14, which was featured on Vogue.com.
Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into the darkness.
Some early reviews below:
“My Parents’ Marriage is a deeply engaging and gratifying novel that deftly explores the generational cycles we are each born into and offers a moving portrait into the joys – and guilt – of finding our own way. I can’t remember the last time I rooted for a character as wholeheartedly as I did for Kokui, a young woman who, having faced shattered illusions around her parents’ union, is determined to shape her life and marriage around truth. Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s is a rare talent.” – ADRIENNE BRODEUR, Author of Little Monsters and Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me
“Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond brilliantly explores a radical reimagining of marriage in a tenderly written love story that completely broke my heart open. As Kokui and her new husband journey from Ghana to the US in an idealistic search for a better life and more equal partnership, they find the road to nuptial harmony paved with frequent shocks and disappointments. The marital realities of patriarchy, class, reproduction, culture, and finances are minutely and exquisitely observed in breathlessly tense exchanges I couldn’t look away from. Brew-Hammond has crafted an arrestingly evocative story, which, like Dominicana and Brown Girl, Brownstones, dismantles immigrant cliches and delivers powerfully vulnerable moments that show what we can mean to each other. This thought-provoking and intense novel speaks loudly to a universal desire not to repeat the mistakes of the past and urgently reminds us it is in our ordinary lives that we must be extraordinarily brave.” – VANESSA WALTERS, author of THE NIGERWIFE
“My Parent’s Marriage is a thought-provoking and searing examination of how patriarchy can impact marriage customs of all kinds. In Ghana, Kokui’s charismatic and philandering father Mawuli Nuga leaves a trail of wives and children in his wake. Though his marriages are both “customary” and “white,” the common threads among them are pain and anger and confusion. Kokui is determined to have a monogamous marriage and live in the United States, but she soon discovers that, too, is not easy. Through her vibrant, complicated characters Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond explores the downstream effects of a system that benefits a few at the expense of many.” – ERICA BAUERMEISTER, NYT bestselling author of No Two Persons
“Intent on avoiding the same marriage trap her mother falls in, Kokui Nuga goes on a heartfelt journey from the glitz of Accra in the ‘70s to the mystical markets of Togo to freezing New York State. My Parents’ Marriage, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s new novel, tackles Ghana’s complicated customary marriage laws with smooth and powerful prose. I couldn’t stop reading it.”
–AYESHA HARRUNA ATTAH, author of The Hundred Wells of Salaga, The Deep Blue Between, Saturday’s Shadows, and Harmattan Rain