Immerse yourself in an enlightening panel discussion featuring community scholars and literary artists as we commemorate the legacy of Ntozake Shange and delve into the profound impact of the Theater of the Black Arts Movement. Join us for an insightful conversation exploring Shange's influential contributions to theater and enduring influence on the cultural landscape.
Panelists include Nina Angela Mercer, Derrick Weston Brown and Soyica Diggs Colbert, moderated by Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman, the 2023-2026 Poet Laureate of Prince George's County, MD and the executive director of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
If you are unable to use this form to RSVP, please use this Google Form to RSVP instead. Email us at info@hurstonwright.org for any questions.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Nina Angela Mercer, PhD is a cultural worker and multidisciplinary artist living in Washington, D.C. Her plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL(The Warehouse Theatre, The Woolly Mammoth for DC’s Fringe, Abrons Arts Center, Little Carib Theatre); ITAGUA MEJI: A Road & A Prayer (Brecht Forum, Alternate Roots, Rutgers University Newark and New Brunswick, The Nuyorican Poets Café); GYPSY & THE BULLY DOOR(The Warehouse Theatre, the former Dumbo Sky); ELIJAHEEN BECOMES WIND (Anacostia Arts Center); CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS (Dorothy Young Arts Center); SPARROW(The Langston Hughes House); and A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING (The Schomburg Center and Target Margin Theater). Nina also joined Urban Bush Women as a collaborating writer and performer for the development of HAINT BLU.
Nina’s writing is published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Press); Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century (Duke University Press); Performance Research Journal (Taylor and Francis); Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People (Bloomsbury Press); and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket Press).
Nina has performed with Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative for 2-3-4, 2-3-4; Angela’s Pulse for Paloma McGregor’s Building A Better Fishtrap/From the River’s Mouth; and for her own video poem created in collaboration with director Toshi Sakai, “Invocation for Josè Antonio Aponte,” which toured nationally and internationally with the “Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom” visual art exhibition.
Nina was the recipient of the CUNY-Schomburg Dissertation Fellowship and is also a former Schomburg Scholar in Residence. She was the recipient of the Institute for Research of the African Diaspora in the Americas Dissertation Fellowship; the Toni Cade Bambara Summer Fellowship; the Center for Humanities Auto-Ethnography and Theater Fellowship; and the Dean K. Harrison Research Fellowship which supported research in Salvador da Bahia.
Nina has taught across disciplines at American University, Howard University, Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn College, Drew University, and for the Beyond Identity Program at City College. She is also co-founder and executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, Inc. (OAR) which is generously funded with grants from the NEA and The Black Seed.
Nina holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). She also holds a Master of Philosophy from The Graduate Center at CUNY, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing - Fiction from American University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University.
Nina is currently the inaugural post doctoral Community Engagement Fellow at The Woodshed Center for Art, Thought, and Culture at Georgetown University’s Racial Justice Institute.
Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He is the founding Poet-In-Residence of Busboys and Poets. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA summer workshops and is a participating author in the PEN-Faulkner Foundation’s Writers-In-Schools-Program. His work has been published and featured in such print journals and online publications as, Racebaitr, Colorlines and Bayou Magazine. His debut collection of poetry, Wisdom Teeth was released in 2011 through PM Press. His second collection of poetry, a chapbook entitled On All Fronts , was released along with two other poetry chapbooks in a bound series from Upper Rubber Boot Press entitled Floodgates Vol.5 , March of 2019.
He resides in PG County, Maryland. He is a Creative Writing teacher at The Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
Soyica Diggs Colbert, PhD is the Vice President for Interdisciplinary Initiatives and Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University.
Colbert is a winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the author of several books, including award-winning Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. The book is described as a “loving, lavishly detailed” (New York Times) and captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry’s life, art, and political activism—one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021. According to Dave Itzkoff, in The New York Times Book Review, Radical Vision is "A devoted and deeply felt account of the development of an artist’s mind." In this acclaimed biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Colbert narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work.
She has also held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a residency at the Schomburg Center, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University.
Colbert’s writing has been featured in the The New York Times, Washington Post, Public Books, Metrograph and American Theatre. She has been interviewed on NPR and commented for the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.
Colbert has lectured nationally and internationally at universities, high schools, and middles schools as well as for civic and arts organizations. She is an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.
In addition to Radical Vision, Colbert is the author of Bodies: Theory for Theatre Studies, Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, and The African American Theatrical Body. Colbert co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition and The Psychic Hold of Slavery. Most recently, she served as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre’s audio play, shadow/land, and a curator for the exhibition “Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
Her research interests span the 19th-21st centuries, from Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, and from poetics to performance.
Khadijah Ali-Coleman, Ed.D., is a multifaceted cultural curator, educator, and award-winning artist known for her transformative work in the fields of arts and education. She is the second Poet Laureate of Prince George's County, Maryland and the author of the poetry collection, The Summoning of Black Joy (2023) and the children's book, Mariah's Maracas (2018). She is co-editor of the book, Homeschooling Black Children in the US (2022). A playwright, her plays have been presented on numerous stages, including the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, Capital Fringe Fest, Bonifant Theater, Anacostia Arts Center, Anacostia Playhouse, the Baltimore Project, Peace Corps Headquarters, and others. Her plays include Follow the Money, This is America; Miss Trudy's Birthday; Running: AMOK; Building Beautiful; Shades of Black; View from the Porch; The Understanding; I'll Send for You; Posterboard; and Fundable which was part of the 2020 Quadrant Playwright Series: City in Transition. As the 2023-2026 Poet Laureate of Prince George's County, MD, she if dedicated to shaping spaces into vibrant hubs of artistic and educational exploration.
Also known publicly as the artist Khadijah Moon, Dr. Ali-Coleman is a prolific writer and performance artist with achievements spanning various genres. She has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, Prince George's Social Innovation Fund and is a 2022 Watering Hole Poetry Fellow. She is the founder of the multidisciplinary arts group Liberated Muse, co-founder of the national education research group Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, LLC (BFHES) and currently serves as the executive director of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
The Remembering the Black Arts Movement Symposium is a program presented by the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Prince George's County Arts Council's Office of the Poet Laureate and the Prince George's County Memorial Library System.
COST: FREE
If you are unable to use this form to RSVP, please use this Google Form to RSVP instead. Email us at info@hurstonwright.org for any questions.