Black Words Are Black Wealth: A Lecture by Tayari Jones, Sponsored by IngramSpark
Friday, March 28, 9:00–10:15 a.m. PT
Petree Hall C, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level 1
HBCUs have long been the incubator for African American literature, and also for robust debate. The gift of self-definition is the true endowment of our institutions. This lecture, part of the #AWP25 HBCU Fellowship Program, discusses this long legacy and also the route forward for Black writers who come of age at HBCUs—as students and as faculty members. This is about how we honor our proud past as we shape our meaningful and consequential future.
New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which was awarded the Women's Prize for Fiction. Jones, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, and NEA Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016.
Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.
Photo credit: Nina Subin