The Life, Writing & Legacy of James Baldwin
Sat 23 Nov 2024 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Marking the centenary of writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, join us for a panel exploring his life, writing, and legacy into the contemporary world. Baldwin’s writings occupy an intersectional space, exploring masculinity, race, class and sexuality and his novels and plays often feature the struggles of gay and African-American characters.
Writer Jason Okundaye (Revolutionary Acts), Colin Grant, director of the WritersMosaic, and broadcaster and critic Alex Clark, will enter conversation on Baldwin’s vital legacy, asking what his work might teach us today.
Chaired by Erica Wagner
Venue: Old Divinity School
Duration: 1 hour
Choose your tickets:
Panel Biography
Colin Grant’s books include Bageye at the Wheel, short-listed for the Pen Ackerley Prize, and Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. His latest book is I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be. His oral history of migration to Britain, What We Leave We Carry will be published in 2025. Grant is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and director of WritersMosaic, an online magazine and division of the Royal Literary Fund. Grant writes for a number of newspapers including the TLS, Guardian, Observer and New York Review of Books.
Jason Okundaye was born in 1997 in South London, where he remains. His essays and features have been published in the Guardian, Evening Standard, British GQ, and the London Review of Books, amongst others. Revolutionary Acts is his first book.
Alex Clark is a broadcaster and journalist, who writes for many publications including the Guardian, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is a co-host on the Graham Norton Book Club for Audible and hosts the TLS podcast. She is a professional chairperson and appears all over the UK at literary festivals & events. Alex is a festival honorary patron.
Chair
Erica Wagner was born in New York and moved to the UK in the 1980s becoming literary Editor for The Times in 1996; a position she held for 17 years. In addition to her career at The Times, Erica has published numerous articles and books, her first being Gravity, a collection of short stories; this was followed 3 years later by the publication of Ariel’s Gift. She has also written for The New York Times and frequently appears on television and radio. and has judged many of the literary World’s most prestigious prizes (The Orange Prize, The Whitbread First Novel Award and the Forward Prize). Erica was part of the panel of judges who declared Yann Martel’s Life of Pi the 2002 Man Booker Prize winner.
