8th Annual African-American Arts Festival, Feb. 15-18
February 11, 2016
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
The University of Baltimore's Spotlight UB performing arts series will present the eighth annual African-American Arts Festival, Feb. 15-18. The festival features a number of events from area artists, plus an opportunity for on-campus talent to showcase their work before a live audience.
The festival is a partnership between Spotlight UB, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the UB Diversity and Culture Office, and, in a continued effort to tie programming to curriculum, with the MFA in Creative Writing in UB's Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences.
The African-American Arts Festival's events are as follows:
Screening: Jonathan Demme's film of Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved Monday, Feb. 15
5:30 p.m.
Free
Beloved will be screened as part of a screenwriting workshop and a literature-to-film class.
Panel Discussion: "Writing Toward Race," with the Black Ladies Brunch Crew of D.C.
Tuesday, Feb. 16
2 p.m.
Free
The Black Ladies Brunch Crew of D.C. discuss a vital topic for writers and readers of all kinds. Steven Leyva, lecturer in the Klein Family School of Communications and a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Design, moderates. Founded in 2014, the Black Ladies Brunch Crew is a group of dynamic women poets living in metropolitan D.C., whose mission is to provide a supportive space for black women writers to discuss ambitions and craft as well as inspire creativity and growth.
Poets Lady Brion and Tafisha A. Edwards
Tuesday, Feb. 16
7 p.m.
Free
Continuing the African-American Arts Festival, MFA Creative Writing and Publishing Design candidate and local poet Lady Brion opens for poet Tafisha A. Edwards, whose work has appeared in The Offing, Bodega Magazine, Fjords Review, The Little Patuxent Review, and other publications. She is a Cave Canem fellow, a graduate of the University of Maryland's Jiminéz-Porter Writers' House and a former educator with the American Poetry Museum. Edwards has received scholarships to The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Minnesota Northwoods Writers' Conference. She is currently writing her first collection of poetry, Confusing the Wind.
Rhythmic Healing Circle: African Drumming
Wednesday, Feb. 17
2 p.m.
Free
Jazz Pianist Lafayette Gilchrist Improvises Between Readings from the Langston Hughes Masterpiece, Ask Your Mama
Thursday, Feb. 18
7 p.m.
Free
Closing the African-American Arts Festival, jazz pianist Lafayette Gilchrist will perform improvised moments between readings from Langston Hughes' masterpiece, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz. Hughes wrote the poem during the Newport Jazz Festival and is considered the father of the poetry-to-jazz movement. Readers will include faculty member and poet performer Diedre Badejo, MFA candidates Sharea Harris and Ron Kipling Williams, and UB student and Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate Derick Ebert. Gilchrist's style is deeply influenced by funk, go-go, and hip-hop and profoundly tied to Baltimore.
Learn more about Spotlight UB's 2016 spring schedule.