Black Like Us: A Celbration of Queer Black Literature

The likes of James baldwin, Audrie Lorde, and Countee Cullen have made enormous contributions to 20th century literature despite having worked within a sexual and racially discriminatory society. Dr. Dwight McBride, C.C. Carter and Dr. Sharon Hollander convene tonight to discuss the contributions of LGBT African Americans to the 20th century literary canon. The night bbegins with an OPP (Open Mic participants perform Other Peoples Poetry) Open Mic followed by a discussion.

Dwight A McBride is chair of African-American Studies and associate professor of African-American Studies and Eniglish at Northwestern University. He is author of Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony (New York University Press, 1999). Most recently he co-edited Black Life Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bi-Sexual Fiction (Cleis Press, 2002)

Sharon P. Holland is Director of Graduate Studies (Department of English) and an associate professor of Eniglish and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the autor of Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivitiy (Duke University Press, 2000), which has been awarded the Lora Romero First Book Prize by the Association of American Studies. She is currently at work on a number of projects including a second monograph (Between Fabrication and Generation: Telling the Story of a Woman), a novel (How Bubba the Socrates Got to be Neither) and a play (Killing Martha) .

C.C. Carter earned her M.A. in Creative Writing form Queens College in New York and recieved her B.A. in English Literature from Spelman College in Atlanta. In addition to her recent release Body Language (Kings Crossing Publishing) C.C. is the author of a chapbook, Letters to My Love. She was the winner of the 5th annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Award.