FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN

Thursday, April 21, 2016 6:00-7:15 pm

Calabar Imports Harlem

2504 Frederick Douglass Blvd. (at 134^th St.)

Harlem, NY 10030

FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN (B.A., Harvard, Ph.D., Yale) is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University.  Her major areas of expertise are American and African American literature, music, history and politics. She has received numerous honors and awards for her teaching and scholarship, including a 2006-2007 Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers fellowship at the New York Public Library.  Griffin is the author of Who Set You Flowin’: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001) and Clawing At the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Thomas Dunne, 2008). She is the editor of Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus (Knopf, 1999), co-editor with Cheryl Fish, of Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing (Beacon, 1998) and co-editor with Brent Edwards and Robert O'Meally of Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004).

WOMEN WRITERS OF THE DIASPORA is a reading/discussion series created and moderated by Dr. Celesti Colds Fechter,  Exec. Director of Education Success Services and Prof., Org. Behavior, King Graduate School, New Rochelle.  The series features poetry, prose, memoir, essay, reportage, urban writing by African and African diasporan women. Past readers include Opal Palmer Adisa, Amber Atiya, Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Jacqueline Bishop, Pamela Booker, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Merle Collins, Lorraine Currelley, Carole Boyce Davies, Bridget Davis, LaTasha Diggs, Kim Coleman Foote, Ifeona Fulani, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Monica Hand, Eartha Watts Hicks, J.P. Howard, Linda Susan Jackson,  Pamela Jackson, Jacqueline Johnson, Patricia Spears Jones, Tayari Jones, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Nigeria Lockley, Yvette Louis, Diana McCaulay, Rosalind McLymont, Pam Mordecai, Elizabeth Nunez, Ebele Oseye, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Cecily Rodway, Gammy Singer, Danyel Smith, Patricia Smith, Martha Southgate, Eisa Ulen, and Tiphanie Yanique. 

Be sure to mark your calendar for future readings/discussions: Stephanie Renee Payne, May 5; Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, May 19;  Cynthia Manick, Jun 9; and Celeste Rita Baker, Jun 23.

Stay updated by following the WOMEN WRITERS OF THE DIASPORA blog at http://womenwritersofdiaspora.blogspot.com/.

The venue, Calabar Imports Harlem, is provided by Atim Anette Otun.  The series is co-sponsored by Mosaic Literary Magazine.

Questions, comments, suggestions:  womenwritersofdiaspora@gmail.com