Please note LaShonda Katrice Barnett is unable to participate in the program this evening. We are pleased to present a conversation with Sonja Williams and Wanda Sabir.‍

Explore the significance of black voices in the press and radio journalism with new works of fiction and non-fiction with authors LaShonda Katrice Barnett and Sonja Williams.

Barnett's Jam on the Vine, is a valentine to the black press, which is to say that in coursing the novel's heroine, Ivoe Williams, who launches a newspaper in the Jim Crow Midwest in 1918, the story sheds light on the critical, yet unsung role, black newspapers have played in the Afrodiasporic quest for Civil Rights.

William's Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio and Freedom draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues like Studs Terkel and Toni Morrison, to illuminate Durham's astounding career. Durham paved the way for black journalists as a dramatist and a star investigative reporter and editor for the pioneering black newspapers the Chicago Defender and Muhammed Speaks. Incisive and in-depth, Word Warrior tells the story of a tireless champion of African American freedom, equality, and justice during an epoch that forever changed a nation.

The discussion will be moderated by Wanda Sabir, an Arts Editor and senior writer for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, Radio host, Depth Psychologist, and Writing professor, raised in San Francisco, and a New Orleans native.

‍Free Admission

‍This event is presented in conjunction with Third Thursdays in Yerba Buena