Nationally acclaimed authors including Kate Clifford Larson, biographer of Harriet Tubman will read excerpts from their work and discuss how African American history is revealed through the art of story telling and literature.  Music, author’s reception and book signing accompany the program.  Suggested donation $10.00

Kate Clifford Larson, PhD. is a historian and author of Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, one of the first non-juvenile Tubman biographies published in six decades. With degrees from Simmons College and Northeastern University, and a doctorate in history from the University of New Hampshire, Larson serves as the historical consultant and advisor to the Harriet Tubman State Park and Underground Railroad Center museum project in Dorchester County, MD, and is a member of the Management Board of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway.  Dr. Larson has been actively involved in a variety of public history initiatives related to Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, including consulting with the National Park Service on the Harriet Tubman Special Resource Study; the State of Maryland’s Underground Railroad Map and Guide; and is serving as an interpretive specialist for Heritage New York to provide new interpretive programming for the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY. She lectures widely on Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, and American Slavery, and has been a guest instructor at numerous professional development workshops for teachers, including National Endowment for the Humanities and Teaching American History programs.  She has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships for her work on Harriet Tubman.  She also serves on the Advisory Board of Governors of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and is an adjunct faculty member at Simmons College.  Her most recent book, The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln, was just released in June, 2008.

JerriAnne Boggis is the founder and Director of the Harriet Wilson Project. She also acts as liaison for the University of New Hampshire's Diversity Initiatives program and as special projects director in the Center for New England Culture. As a community activist, Ms. Boggis has developed several community programs that dealt with history and race. These programs served to raise awareness of New Hampshire’s diverse heritage and increase the visibility of Black history in the state. Ms. Boggis received her M.A. in Writing from Rivier College. She is co-editor of the collection of essays on Wilson, Harriet Wilson’s New England: Race, Writing & Region.

Patricia Smith	Michael C. White	David Anthony Durham
Patricia Smith’s latest, Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press) was chosen by Edward Sanders as a National Poetry Series winner, voted as the Best Poetry Book of 2006 on About.com, and was awarded the 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her new book, Blood Dazzler, will be published by Coffee House in 2008. She is also the author of three previous books of poetry -- Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Chautauqua Literary Journal,  TriQuarterly, and other journals, and in many groundbreaking anthologies--most recently Gathering Ground, The Spoken Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry. Her poem "The Way Pilots Walk" received a Pushcart Prize, and is featured in Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses. Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular National Poetry Slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. No one else has won the title more than twice. Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, she was featured in the nationally-released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.” Smith has read her work at venues round the world, including the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. In the U.S., she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Bumbershoot, the inaugural Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. She has also collaborated with Urban Bush Women choreographer Paloma McGregor, Philip Pemberton and the blues band Bop Thunderous, and has performed as an occasional vocalist with the stellar improvisational jazz group, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble.	Michael C. White is the author of five novels: A Brother’s Blood, The Blind Side of the Heart, A Dream of Wolves, and The Garden of Martyrs. His latest novel, Soul Catcher (William Morrow, ’07), was a Book Sense Selection and Historical Novels Review Editor’s Choice. He is also the author of the story collection, Marked Men.  He has published fifty stories in national and literary magazines, and was the founding editor of the American Fiction series.  His latest novel, Beautiful Assassin, will appear in 2009 in America from William Morrow and in English from Quercus.  His novel A Dream of Wolves is currently under option by Miracle Pictures.  He teaches at Fairfield University, where he is the fiction editor of Dogwood.	David Anthony Durham received an MFA from the University of Maryland. His first novel, Gabriel's Story, received the 2002 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and a 2002 Alex Award from the American Library Association. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times and Publisher's Weekly Best of 2001 pick. His second novel, Walk Through Darkness, was a New York Times Notable Book and a best of 2002 selection from The San Francisco Chronicle, Black Issues Book Review and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. His third, Pride of Carthage, a Book Sense Selection for February 2005, was a bestseller in Chile and Mexico. His most recent work, Acacia, an epic fantasy, was one of Kirkus Reviews ten best books of the year. His novels have been published in the UK and translated into eight languages: French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. David was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Writer at Colorado College, has run workshops for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, and is now an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Cal State University in Fresno.