Nonfiction

Every calendar month, regardless of the year, decade or century, shepherds in its own joyous and heart-wrenching moments.

September is no exception.

This month regularly calls to children and adults of all ages to start or settle into a new school year. Its Labor Day marks the unofficial end to relaxed summer living and the beginning of more spirited fall days. And September is the month that four young African American girls senselessly lost their lives in a racially motivated 1963 Birmingham church bombing, while approximately 3,000 Americans of all races and backgrounds died in plane-fueled terrorist attacks on this month’s 11^th day in 2001.

September 2016 will provide its own unique milestone. Years in the making, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) will open its doors on Washington DC’s National Mall this September 24th. This museum promises to illuminate the Black American experience in all its innovation, pain and progress.

NMAAHC Director Lonnie Bunch III says that the museum will tell “the quintessential American story.” While that story may be based in a specific culture, Bunch maintains that it is everyone’s story. In that declaration, Bunch echoes the sentiments of pioneering and award-winning African American writer/dramatist Richard Durham – born 99 years ago this September 6^th.

Back in the late 1940s, Richard Durham believed that the Black American experience represented a microcosm of “the human condition of the main body of people in the world.” In Durham’s view, oppression combined with poverty, inadequate education and health care, adversely affected most of the world’s population. Therefore, he said, the story of Blacks in America would resonate with millions of people who “also want to uproot poverty and prejudice.”

Based on this philosophy, Durham created compelling dramas, newspaper articles and other media about African American heroes and heroines like Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary Church Terrell and Muhammad Ali. The artifacts of many similarly notable men and women will be featured in the NMAAHC.

So why not join me in celebrating Richard Durham’s 99^th birthday and the highly anticipated birth of the Smithsonian’s newest museum by visiting Washington, DC’s National Mall this month? And to read more about Director Lonnie Bunch’s journey to make the NMAAHC a reality, click here.

Interested in a fascinating discussion about nonfiction writing? Then you’ll want to attend the National Association of Black Journalists/National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ joint 2016 conference session, “Tell Me A Story: Compelling Narrative Nonfiction Writing and the Authors who Create Them.”

Whether exploring heartbreaking church murders in Charleston, a broken justice system in Chicago or colorism, as well as the life stories of remarkable people from the eras of vinyl records and radio, authors Wayne Dawkins, (City Son), Herb Frazier (We Are Charleston), Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve (Crook County), Rashod Ollison (Soul Serenade), Lori Tharps (Same Family, Different Colors) and myself (Word Warrior), will talk about our books – and sign your own personal copy.

This exciting NABJ/NAHJ Authors Showcase session starts at 10:30am on Friday, August 5th in at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Northwest DC.

For more details visit http://www.nabjnahj.com. I hope to see you there!

This month Word Warrior was selected as a finalist in the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Awards. These awards were created in honor of the first published African American poet/writer by QBR, The Black Books Review – “the African American book review of record,” according to cultural critic Martin Arnold of the New York Times.

Phyllis Wheatley was brought to America as an enslaved African from the Gambia, West Africa in 1770. She was seven or eight years old. Wheatley soon learned how to read and write, and published her first poem at age 12. She went on to publish several poems that made her famous in early 1770s, and by 1775 Wheatley became the first enslaved African in America to publish a book.

How fitting that Word Warrior, a book about a man who loved poetry and who was a lyrical poet and powerful writer, would earn finalist status in the Wheatley Awards category that celebrates an author’s first nonfiction book!

Please click here to see the other finalists in this and the other Wheatley Awards categories. And thanks for your support!

Any major writing project – a entire book, a chapter in an edited volume or an article for a popular or academic publication – requires hours of intense thought, planning and research. And perhaps there is no better research resource than a library.

Undoubtedly, one of the major libraries in this country is the Library of Congress (LOC), located in Washington DC. While the craziness of politics may rage in the halls of the United States Capitol building and the offices that American senators and congressmen occupy steps away from this library, the LOC is a quiet, efficient and wonderful home to carefully categorized and stored historical and contemporary gems.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of speaking at the Library of Congress. I talked about how I had spent hours, days and months trolling through this library while conducting research for my book Word Warrior. As a part of its ongoing Books and Beyond series, the LOC’s Center for the Book sponsored my talk, and it recently posted the video of this event.

Want to see what I had to say?

Click HERE and enjoy!