THE CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK
The Division of Humanities and the Arts The Simon Rifkind Center for the Humanities The Martin and Toni Sosnoff President’s Fund for Excellence in the Arts
present the 2015 Langston Hughes Festival Medal to...
Jacqueline Woodson Holding Up Mirrors and Windows November 20, 2015 - 6:00PM The City College of New York Aaron Davis Hall-Marian Anderson Theater Convent Avenue between 133rd and 135h Street New York NY 10031
The Martin and Toni Sosnoff President’s Fund for Excellence in the Arts The Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities & the Arts
www.ccny.cuny.edu
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About City College THE CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK, the flagship college of The City University of New York, is a comprehensive teaching, research, and service institution dedicated to accessibility and excellence in undergraduate and graduate education. Requiring demonstrated potential for admission and a high level of accomplishment for graduation, the College provides a diverse student body with opportunities to achieve academically, creatively, and professionally in the liberal arts and sciences and in professional fields such as engineering, education, architecture, and biomedical education. The College is committed to fostering student-centered education and advancing knowledge through scholarly research. As a public university with public purposes, it also seeks to contribute to the cultural, social, and economic life of New York.
The 2015 Langston Hughes Festival
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Open the doors to all. Let the rich and the poor take their seats together, and know of no distinction save that of industry, good conduct, and intellect -Townsend Harris, Founder
www.ccny.cuny.edu
Our Vision Since its founding in 1847, The City College of New York has provided a world-class higher education to an increasingly diverse student body – serving as one of the single most important avenues to upward mobility in the nation. Access to excellence remains the vision of the College today. The College strives for excellence in its wide-ranging undergraduate and masters programs (including programs in the only public schools of engineering, architecture, and biomedical education in the city) and in its 13 on-site CUNY doctoral programs – all of which are designed to prepare students for successful careers as well as for continuing graduate and post-graduate education. The College’s commitment to excellence is further exemplified by its emphasis on scholarly research and the integration of this research with teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
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The Festival’s History T
he original incarnation of the Festival was conceived in 1973 by Raymond R. Patterson (1929-2001), professor emeritus of the English Department of the City College of New York with the aid of a few of his colleagues as a celebration of the most distinguished writers of African descent associated with the tradition of Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar. What began as a loosely defined event quickly evolved into its present form as The Langston Hughes Festival. Dedicated to honoring exceptional writers of poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography and critical essays that celebrate the memory and tradition of Langston Hughes, the Festival has awarded medals to African American writers of high distinction whose origins are associated with locales as near as New York and the American South, and as distant as the Caribbean and Africa. James Baldwin was celebrated as the first Langston Hughes Festival awardee on March 17, 1978 at a “homecoming tribute.” The gala event was capped by the presentation of the Martin Luther King Memorial Medal to Baldwin for his “lifelong dedication to humanitarian ideals.” However, beginning with Ralph Waldo Ellison’s visit in 1984, the Festival has presented to each honored guest our own Langston Hughes medallion. Created by Lawrence F. Sykes of Rhode Island College, the original bronze medal’s design was based on a photograph in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University. Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, Chinua Achebe, Jayne Cortez, George Lamming, August Wilson, Sterling Brown, Octavia Butler are some of the distinguished writers and scholars who since 1978, the Festival has invited to speak at City College. Traditionally, the festival consists of a two-day affair that includes musical interludes and student performances in addition to conferences and symposia where we invite distinguished scholars from around the country and the world to discuss issues of Black literature and the arts. In addition to the medal ceremony, and other events, the Festival also sponsors the Langston Hughes Choral Speaking Festival, an event that draws to City College three to four hundred young scholars from New York City public schools to creatively recite or enact Hughes’ poetry. In 2015, the committee instituted an essay competition for freshman and sophomore students at the City College of New York to encourage future generations of Langston Hughes scholars.
The 2015 Langston Hughes Festival
Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird, That cannot fly.
Holding Up Mirrors and Windows
James Mercer Langston Hughes|1902 - 1967 The Langston Hughes Festival Celebrates the life and spirit of the poet laureate of Harlem Born in Joplin Missouri, Hughes rose to become a major American poet and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He lived and traveled widely, including to Africa, Mexico, France and Asia. Upon the publication of his first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues (1926), he inaugurated a tradition of poetry inflected with the Afrocentric rhythms and tonalities of blues jazz, and remained dedicated to the depiction of urban African American folk life. Hughes also wrote plays, a novel, two autobiographies and numerous essays and other works of prose, including the novel Not Without Laughter and the beloved “Simple� books that grew out of his columns in the Chicago Defender. He also edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore.
We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
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President’s Welcome Thank You for Joining Us ! It is my great pleasure to welcome you to The City College of New York for the 2015 Langston Hughes Festival, which celebrates and expands upon the legacy of Harlem poet laureate Langston Hughes. The culmination of the festival is the presentation of the Langston Hughes Medal to a highly distinguished writer. Congratulations to Jacqueline Woodson, one of the most eminent writers in the world and this year’s Langston Hughes Medal recipient. I want to congratulate The Langston Hughes Festival and it’s committee for a successful event that has grown from a longstanding City College tradition that began in 1978. Thank you for joining us for the Langston Hughes Festival and I hope you enjoy the experience.
Lisa S. Coico
President, The City College of New York
The 2015 Langston Hughes Festival
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statement from the dean of the Division of Humanities and the arts It is a great honor for the Division of Humanities and Arts to support the Langston Hughes Festival. Named for one of the premier American poets of the twentieth century and long-time Harlem resident, the Festival honors African-American and other African diaspora writers of distinction. Since its inception in 1978, the Festival has brought to the City College campus virtually every luminary of African-American letters, starting with James Baldwin and continuing through Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Maya Angelou, Edwidge Danticat, Walter Mosley, and many, many others. I welcome all of you – faculty, staff, students, community residents – to this important event, and especially welcome our honored guest and Langston Hughes Medalist, Jacqueline Woodson.
Eric D. Weitz
Dean of Humanities and Arts Distinguished Professor of History
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The langston hughes festival Award Ceremony Marian Anderson Theatre (6:00-8:00) - Celebratory Reception to follow OPENING Highlights from the 2015 Langston Hughes Choral Festival
WELCOME - RENATA KOBETTS MILLER, Chair of English CEREMONY HOST - JANE TILLMAN IRVING PROCLAMATION FROM THE CITY OF NEW YORK MUSICAL TRIBUTE - TOSHI REAGON READING - JACQUELINE WOODSON CONVERSATION - JACQUELINE WOODSON & HILTON ALS PRESENTATION OF THE LANGSTON HUGHES MEDAL - PRESIDENT LISA S. COICO CLOSING COMMENTS- RETHA POWERS CLOSING READING What I Believe by Jacqueline Woodson Read by City College Student Victoria Juste
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NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR We are thrilled to award Jacqueline Woodson with the 2015 Langston Hughes medal. This follows the Festival’s momentous celebration last year of Walter Mosley. Jacqueline Woodson is the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults, including From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (1995), which was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won a Jane Addams Children’s Book Award;Miracle’s Boys (2000), which won the 2001 Coretta Scott King Award and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize;Hush (2002), a National Book Award finalist; Locomotion (2003), also a National Book Award finalist. Three of Woodson’s books have been named Newbery Honor Books: Show Way (2005), Feathers (2007), and After Tupac &D Foster (2008). Her recent books include the young adult novel Beneath a Meth Moon (2012) and Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), a novel in verse about Woodson’s family and segregation in the South, which won a National Book Award and was named a Newbery Honor Book. In 2015 she was named Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. While Woodson makes her home in Brooklyn it is important to note that many of her novels such as also take place in Harlem the setting and muse of the work of Langston Hughes. Like Langston Hughes, Woodson is a prolific writer in many genres including fiction, poetry, drama and opera. Ms. Woodson also shares with Hughes a wide readership among young readers and is taught in schools all over the country. Several of her books such as Locomotion and Brown Girl Dreaming are written in verse and she frequently speaks of Hughes as a primary influence. In a National Public Radio interview with Terri Gross, Woodson said that when she read Hughes as a child “it was the first time a poet spoke to me and I understood them… And I feel like he kind of opened the floodgates for me to understanding that inside of poems were stories and messages and language that mattered.” As a Langston Hughes medalist, Woodson joins the company of James Baldwin, Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, August Wilson, Octavia Butler, and Edwidge Danticat, among many other literary luminaries of the African diaspora who have received this distinguished medal. A special feature of this year’s Langston Hughes Festival is a Young Readers’ Q&A on Friday November 20th at 11:00 AM where nearly 600 devoted readers K-12 from Harlem and the Bronx will meet with this inspiring author whose stories both mirror their lives and inspire them to dream. The same day at 3:00 PM, fellow writers of books for young readers as well as scholars and educators on the subject will engage in a lively discussion of Woodson, her work and her influence. I would like to thank the entire Langston Hughes Festival Committee for its tireless efforts, Dean Weitz for his commitment to the Langston Hughes Festival, President Lisa S. Coico for her ongoing support of this tradition. Finally, here’s to the legacy of Langston Hughes whose example continues to inspire writers and readers alike making us all much more “free within ourselves.” We hope to see you all at our next Langston Hughes Festival award ceremony.
RETHA POWERS DIRECTOR
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JACQUELINE WOODSON A Brief Biographical Overview Jacqueline Woodson is one of the country’s most renowned and widely-read authors for children and young adults. She has written more than 30 books and won dozens of awards, including the Coretta Scott King Book Award, Caldecott Medal and Newbery Honor. In 2006, she received the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement. Last year Jacqueline won the National Book Award – our nation’s preeminent literary prize -- for “Brown Girl Dreaming.” The New York Times described this book of verse as “poems that will, for years to come, be stored in our bloodstream.” Shortly after hearing about it, President Barack Obama purchased a copy for his daughters. Jacqueline is an engaging and in-demand speaker, traveling across the country to address students, teachers, parents and librarians about her life and work. Earlier this year, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In October, when Michelle Obama honored the 2015 class of the National Student Poets Program, she chose Jacqueline to address the crowd at the White House. Growing up, Jacqueline was interested in becoming a writer, as she says, in order to “write about communities of color, write about girls, write about friendship and all of these things that I felt were missing in a lot of the books that I read as a child.” Her work explores race, class, sexuality, sexual abuse and other issues with sensitivity and respect, and she is a leader in the fight to bring more diverse voices to the world of publishing. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline was raised in Brooklyn, but is deeply informed by the time she spent in Greenville, South Carolina, as a child. Her 2001 picture book “The Other Side,” examines segregation in a small, rural town and was selected for Oprah’s book club. “Show Way,” based on Jacqueline’s own history, tells a story of African-American women across generations, from slavery and the civil rights movement to the present. “This Is the Rope,” a fictive memoir published in 2013, was inspired by Jacqueline’s mother who moved from South Carolina to Brooklyn in 1968. Several of Jacqueline’s books have had a life beyond the page. “Locomotion,” about a boy in Brooklyn who finds his voice through poetry, was adapted for the theater and premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 2010. “Show Way” was adapted as a musical in 2013. “Miracle’s Boys,” about two brothers growing up without parents in Washington Heights, became a 2005 miniseries for the cable network The N (Nickelodeon’s teen network). Filmed in Harlem with a soundtrack by the rapper Nas, the six-part drama was directed by Spike Lee and several other celebrated African-American directors. Hollywood director Jonathan Demme has optioned the film rights to Jacqueline’s 2012 novel “Beneath a Meth Moon” with the actress Elle Fanning attached to play the main character, Laurel. Jacqueline is currently completing her second adult novel, “Another Brooklyn,” which will be published next year by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins.
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Works by Jacqueline woodson NOVELS
WHAT I BELIEVE
Last Summer with Maizon
I believe in God and evolution.
The Dear One
I believe in the Bible and the Qur’an.
Maizon at Blue Hill Between Madison and Palmetto I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This
I believe in Christmas and the New World. I believe that there is good in each of us
Autobiography of a Family Photo
no matter who we are or what we believe in.
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
I believe in the words of my grandfather.
The House You Pass on the Way
I believe in the city and the South
If You Come Softly Lena Miracle’s Boys Hush
the past and the present. I believe in Black people and White people coming together.
Locomotion
I believe in nonviolence and “Power to the People.”
Behind You
I believe in my little brother’s pale skin and my own
Feathers
dark brown.
After Tupac and D Foster Peace, Locomotion Beneath a Meth Moon
I believe in my sister’s brilliance and the too-easy books I love to read.
Brown Girl Dreaming
I believe in my mother on a bus and Black people
Another Brooklyn
refusing to ride.
PICTURE BOOKS The Other Side Coming On Home Soon Show Way
I believe in good friends and good food. I believe in johnny pumps and jump ropes, Malcolm and Martin, Buckeyes and Birmingham, writing and listening, bad words and good words—
Pecan Pie Baby
I believe in Brooklyn!
The Is the Rope
I believe in one day and someday and this perfect
Each Kindness Visiting Day
moment called Now.
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Who’s Who? Hilton Als became a staff writer at The New Yorker in October, 1994, and a theatre critic in 2002. He began contributing to the magazine in 1989, writing pieces for The Talk of the Town. Before coming to The New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. He has also written articles for The Nation and collaborated on film scripts for “Swoon” and “Looking for Langston.” Als edited the catalogue for the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition entitled “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art,” which ran from November, 1994, to March, 1995. His first book, “The Women,” a meditation on gender, race, and personal identity, was published in 1996. His most recent book, “White Girls,” discusses various narratives around race and gender. In 1997, the New York Association of Black Journalists awarded Als first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment. He was awarded a Guggenheim for Creative Writing in 2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2002-03. In 2009, Als worked with the performer Justin Bond on “Cold Water,” an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and videos by performers, at La MaMa Gallery. In 2010, he co-curated “Self-Consciousness” at the Veneklasen Werner Gallery in Berlin, and published “Justin Bond/Jackie Curtis,” his second book. Als has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan, and Smith College. He lives in New York City.
Dr. Lisa S. Coico is the 12th President of The City College of New York and the first City University of New York graduate to lead City College. Since joining City College in 2010, Dr. Coico has overseen a resurgence in academic excellence, student engagement and faculty enhancement for the benefit of its diverse student population. Through a comprehensive program emanating from her vast experience and embracing the input of students, staff, faculty, alumni, community leaders, and others, President Coico has significantly upgraded the quality of the academic experience and student life as a whole at City College. The success of her programs has been reflected in many ways including significant gifting from alumni, growth of the Macaulay Honors Program on campus and recognition of City College as one of the “Best Colleges in the U.S.” by the Princeton Review, Forbes and U.S. News & World Report, and one of the “Best Value Colleges” as measured by the Princeton Review. Dr. Coico is a nationally prominent educator and researcher in microbiology and immunology and former Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of Surgery at Temple University. She also served as executive director of the Tri-Institutional Research Program, a research consortium of Cornell University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Rockefeller University. She has also been honored as Alumna of the Year at her undergraduate alma mater, Brooklyn College.
Retha Powers is General Editor of Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations described by Dwight Garner in the New York Times as “a necessary and preternaturally lively new reference book… it also possesses something no other book of quotations quite does: a potent and sweeping narrative arc. It is possible to consume this book avidly from end to end.” Powers is also editor of the anthology Black Silk: A Collection of African American Erotica and co-editor of This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work. She is the Assistant Director of the Publishing Certificate Program at the City College of New York and the Director of the Langston Hughes Festival.
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Jane Tillman Irving has long been a prominent figure in New York City broadcast journalism. She is currently on her second stint at WCBS-AM/NEWSRADIO 880, working as a news writer and reporter. Previously, she spent 14 years there as a reporter, before making the transition to television, joining WCBS-TV/ Channel 2 as a correspondent. Additional radio credits include WNYC, WBLS, WLIB, and WWRL. From 1990 to 1996, Ms. Irving was an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has also taught journalism at the City College of New York (CCNY) and the New York Institute of Technology, and has been a guest lecturer at Hofstra University. Irving anchored WebMD’s daily Internet news broadcast for physicians, and was the American researcher for documentaries broadcast on the BBC in Wales, one of which was on the life of Paul Robeson. She was sent by the United States Information Agency to address broadcast journalists in New Zealand, and in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. After graduating from Hunter College High School, she graduated from CCNY with a degree in English. She then graduated from the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course at Harvard University. Jane Tillman Irving’s work has earned her more than 30 awards for outstanding news coverage, including four in the past year. She is First Vice President of the New York Press Club.
Victoria Juste is a Junior double majoring in Biology and Black Studies. She has served as both a Leonard Davis Fellow and Colin Powell Fellow. Selected as a Community Engagement Fellow, Ms. Juste worked on creating a chapter of Peer Health Exchange that works to empower teens to make healthy and informed decisions. Her work involved recruiting, training, and managing college students to teach health workshops in NYC public high schools. Ms. Juste is also a member of the National Council of Negro Women, Inc., and a choir member of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Upon graduation, she looks forward to attending graduate school while still continuing to service her community.
Renata Kobetts Miller is associate professor and chair of English at the City College of New York. During her three years as chair, the English Department has hired 6 new faculty, building strength in the areas of 20thcentury literature, composition, global literatures, and science and literature. Renata is the author of a book on reinterpretations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as essays on Victorian theater and the novel, and she is completing a book manuscript titled “Playing Her Part: The Victorian Novel, Theater, and the Actress.” She is starting a project on the emergence of the sciences and humanities as disciplines in the Victorian period. Her work-in-progress on the theater of the 1890s includes mentoring City College advanced undergraduate and graduate students in developing an online archive of materials on London’s Independent Theatre Society. A native of Queens and an alumna of Townsend Harris High School, she received her A.B. from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Indiana University before coming to City College as the Pforzheimer Postdoctoral Fellow in British Literature.
Toshi Reagon is a multi-talented singer-songwriter-musician-composer, a one-woman celebration of all that’s dynamic, progressive and uplifting in American music. Her style has been described as a “hold-nothing-back approach to rock, blues, R&B, country, folk, spirituals and funk.” Toshi first took to the stage at age 17, and over nearly 30 years has collaborated with top innovators across a wide spectrum of the entertainment field, including Lenny Kravitz, Nona Hendryx, Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Lizz Wright and Me’shell NdegéOcello. Her performances with her mother, Bernice Johnson Reagon–civil rights activist and founder of the a cappella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock–are legendary. Toshi has released a dozen albums and produced many more. In one of her proudest moments, Toshi played for her godfather Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden (2009), a benefit for Seeger’s environmental organization, Clearwater. She has also performed with the Freedom Singers at the White House in President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s tribute to the music of the civil rights movement.
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Eric D. Weitz is Dean of Humanities and Arts and Distinguished Professor of History at The City College of New York. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Minnesota, where he was Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History and the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts. Trained in modern European and German history, his work in recent years has extended to the history and politics of international human rights and crimes against humanity. He received his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1983. His major publications include Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (2007), Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation(2003), and Creating German Communism, 1890-1990 (1997), all with Princeton University Press. Weimar Germany was named an “Editor’s Choice” by The New York Times Book Review, and was included in the “Year in Books” of the Financial Times(London) and “The Best Books of 2007” of The Independent(London). It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, and Chinese. Weitz has been the recipient of many fellowships and awards from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. He sits on the Academic Advisory Board of the Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam, Germany, and on the boards of many journals. As Dean of Humanities and Arts, Weitz has been building the faculty and identifying new resources for faculty research and creative activity.
Pre-Award Ceremony events Young Readers Q &A Friday November 20, 2015 11:00 AM Aaron Davis Hall, Marian Anderson Theater Moderator: Norval Soleyn
Symposium “Holding Up Mirrors and Windows: The Work of Jacqueline Woodson” Friday November 20, 2015 3:00PM - 5:00PM Aaron Davis Hall, Studio B
Moderator: Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center. Poetry collections include: REMEMBERING FIREFLIES and SECRETS OF SHEETS (Plain View Press); THE BONSAI CURATOR and VAN GOGH’S EAR; (Cervena Barva Press), DARING DAUGHTERS/DEFIANT DREAMS (A Gathering of Tribes) and THE PLAGIARIST (Dos Madres Press). Several children’s books have been published, too, VISITATION RITES( Diversion Press) and HOMER THE LITTLE STRAY CAT (Red Balloon Press) the most recent. Plain View Press recently published an edited anthology, IT’S ALL ABOUT SHOES, a multi-ethnic collection about women and their relationship to shoes. RONIT AND JAMIL, A Palestinian/Israeli ROMEO AND JULIET in verse will be published by Harper Collins in 2017.
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Panelists: Bryan Collier loves to paint. And he has successfully channeled his creative energy and love of art into an illustrious career as a children’s book illustrator and writer. Originally from rural Maryland, Bryan now calls New York City’s Harlem home. He began painting at the age of fifteen and eventually landed a scholarship to the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York, where he later graduated with honors. Collier’s illustrations in his newest book Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport bring to life the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This book shows Collier’s talent for mixing art mediums to create stunning illustrations that entrance the reader. Martin’s Big Words has received much acclaim and was awarded the 2002 Caldecott honor as well as the 2002 Coretta Scott King Honor. Collier has also won acclaim for his book Uptown, which was his first foray into both writing and illustrating. Uptown is the recipient of various awards: the 2001 Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, the 2001 Ezra Jack Keats Award for New Illustrator, Parenting Magazine’s Reading Magic Award and the Marion Vannett Ridgeway Award for a first-time author and illustrator. Collier has also illustrated various other books, such as Freedom River and Visiting Langston. Despite the fact that his career is in high gear, Collier completely values his role as the director for the Harlem Horizon Art Studio, an art program based out of the Harlem Hospital and designed especially for teenagers and kids. It is Collier’s belief that teaching the appreciation of art can only lead to positive things.
Jason Reynolds is crazy. About stories. After earning a BA in English from The University of Maryland, College Park, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where you can often find him walking the four blocks from the train to his apartment talking to himself. Well, not really talking to himself, but just repeating character names and plot lines he thought of on the train, over and over again, because he’s afraid he’ll forget it all before he gets home. Jason Reynolds is the author of critically acclaimed When I Was the Greatest, for which he was the recipient of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent, Boy in the Black Suit, and All American Boys, cowritten with City College M.F.A. program graduate Brendan Kiely.
Dr. Lois T. Stover’s primary research is related to the role of young adult literature in the middle and secondary curriculum. She has done research on several important authors of young adult literature, exploring how their personal histories informs their writing and how discussions of these intersections of life and art can be woven into the English language arts classroom. She is particularly interested in ways in which the use of young adult literature reflective of the diversity of both the U.S. and the world can help empower adolescent readers and promote both understanding of self and appreciation for other perspectives. Her most recent work has investigated the portrayal of young adults who identify themselves as artists in literature written for the young adult audience and how art/text interactions are evolving with new publishing technologies. She is the author of Jacqueline Woodson: ‘The Real Thing’ and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Adult: The Arts in Young Adult Literature.
Rita Williams-Garcia’s Newbery Honor-winning novel, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The sequel, P.S. Be Eleven, was also a Coretta Scott King Award winner and an ALA Notable Children’s Book for Middle Readers. She is also the author of six distinguished novels for young adults: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies (a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book), and Fast Talk on a Slow Track (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults); Blue Tights; and Like Sisters on the Homefront, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, is on the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children & Young Adults Program, and has two adult daughters, Stephanie and Michelle, and a son-in-law, Adam.
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THE FESTIVAL MEDALLION The Festival is dedicated to honoring exceptional writers of poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography and critical essays that celebrate the memory and tradition of Langston Hughes. Along the way, the Festival has awarded medals to African American writers of high distinction whose origins are associated with locals across the globe.
Past Recipients James Baldwin (1978) Gwendolyn Brooks (1979) John Oliver Killens (1980) Toni Cade Bambara (1981) Paule Marshall (1981) Toni Morrison (1981) Sterling A. Brown (1982) Margaret Walker Alexander (1983) Ralph W. Ellison (1984) Raymond R. Patterson (1986) Dennis Brutus (1987) Alice Walker (1988) Amiri Baraka (1989) Alice Childress (1990) Maya Angelou (1991) August Wilson (1992) Chinua Achebe (1993) Ernest Gaines (1994) Ishmael Reed (1995) Nikki Giovanni (1996) Albert Murray (1997) George Lamming (1998) Sonia Sanchez (1999) Wole Soyinka (2000) Jayne Cortez (2001) Derek Walcott (2002) Lucille Clifton (2003) James A. Emanuel (2003) Sekou Sundiata (2003) Arnold Rampersad (2003) John Edgar Wideman (2004) Octavia Butler (2005) Gregory H. Williams (2008) Edwidge Danticat (2011) Walter Mosley (2014)
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THE LANGSTON HUGHES FESTIVAL COMMITTEE AT THE CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK: Retha Powers, Director Charles Frye: Coordinator of the Choral Speaking Festival Renata Miller, Chair of English Cheryl Sterling, Director, Back Studies Program Jodi-Ann Francis, Assistant Director, Black Studies Program Jo-Ann Hamilton, Assistant Professor, English (Past Director) Emily Raboteau, Associate Professor, English Norval Soleyn, College Now David Unger, Director Publishing Certificate Program Linda Villarosa, Assistant Professor, Journalism Program Director [William Gibbons-Librarian] DEAN ERIC WEITZ, ex officio Professor Gordon E. Thompson, Director emeritus
The Langston Hughes Festival celebrates the life and spirit of the poet laureate of Harlem, Langston Hughes (1902-1967). Our celebration includes a ceremony where we award The Langston Hughes Medal to highly distinguished writers from throughout the African diaspora for their impressive volumes of poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography and critical essays that celebrate the memory and tradition of Langston Hughes. Our celebration includes occasional salons, scholarly conferences and symposia as well as the sponsorship of a Choral Reading Festival for students grade K through 12 and The Langston Hughes Festival Essay Contest.
FOUNDERS Raymond Patterson ~ Jerome Brooks ~ Nathaniel Norment
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Jacqueline Woodson
ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS These events are made possible through the cooperation of the Division of the Humanities and the Arts, Office of the President, Department of English, Friends of the Davis Center, Black Studies. The Festival Committee acknowledges the significant support of the College’s Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities and The Martin and Toni Sosnoff President’s Fund for Excellence in the Arts The Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities & the Arts Established in 1986 through a grant from the Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, “in recognition of a revered son of City College, Class of 1922, Simon H. Rifkind was a man of wit, learning, and humane wisdom, and dedicated to the perpetual renewal of the life of the mind.” The Honorable Simon H. Rifkind was born in Russia, emigrated to the U.S. at the age of nine, and was educated in New York City public schools, at City College (B.A.), and at Columbia University (J.D.). An early champion of Holocaust survivors, Judge Rifkind served on numerous governmental panels and agencies, and on the boards of medical, religious, and philanthropic institutions–as well as on the New York City Board of Higher Education from 1954-1966. His many awards include the Medal of Freedom, presented to him by President Harry S. Truman. The primary goal of the Center is to promote the College’s cultural activities in the Humanities and Arts. It does so in a variety of ways, including support for faculty research, the organization and sponsorship of special events of various kinds, high school outreach programs, and the support of a number of publications associated with the College. We would also like to thank Vice President Karen Witherspoon and her staff, particularly Jessica Lino, and Gregory Shanck, Anthony Achilles, David Covington and Sheldon Nevelson and the staff of Aaron Davis Hall. We could not have succeeded without the tremendous help of the staff of RAP-SI (BMI). Special thanks to Trevaughn Bynum, David King and to designers Kevaughn Isaacs and Alison Hamilton. We also thank Marva Allen of Hue-Man Bookstore for being the festival’s bookseller and City Imprint Inc. for producing this program. www.ccny.cuny.edu Special thanks to our Community and Media/Promotional Partners:
The 2015 Langston Hughes Festival
Holding Up Mirrors and Windows
www.ccny.cuny.edu
“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.�
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