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An Evening with Transition Magazine

featuring

MARAME GUEYE
JOHN WARNER SMITH
PATRICK SYLVAIN

Co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Date

May

Tuesday
May 5, 2015
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes professor and storyteller MARAME GUEYE, poet JOHN WARNER SMITH, and professor and critic PATRICK SYLVAIN for the launch of Transition's 117th issue, "New African Fiction."

Join Transition editors and staff, with issue 117 contributors Marame Gueye, John Warner Smith, and Patrick Sylvain, for a reading of new short fiction and poetry from the issue. Since the publication of Tope Folarin’s 2013 Caine Prize-winning story, “Miracle,” the magazine has been happily overwhelmed by submissions from African and Africa-descended writers. In this issue, you’ll find the best from Transition's fiction inbox—the adventurous, the erotic, the audacious—each story embodying, in Folarin’s words, “creation working on itself.”

John Warner Smith

In the summer of 2014, John Warner Smith sat to write a poem as a reply to a Father’s Day letter he had received from his son Patrick. The response eventually became a book-length manuscript, not yet titled but scheduled for publication by MadHat Press in 2016. Five of the poems are published in Issue 117 of Transition Magazine. “These poems,” Smith says, “speak truths of and to boys and men of color as only an African American father and grandfather can. They seek to go beyond history and contemporary influences to capture the inner, spiritual struggles and possibilities—archetypal forces—that shape and ultimately define our individual and collective journeys toward manhood and selfhood.” Smith’s debut collection, A Mandala of Hands, was published by Aldrich Press. His poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Callaloo, Ploughshares, Killens Review of Arts & Letters and numerous other journals. Smith earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Cave Canem Fellow. In addition to directing a non-profit education advocacy organization, he teaches English at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Marame Gueye

Marame Gueye is a writer and storyteller who is currently working on her first novel. She is Associate Professor of English and African Diaspora Literatures at East Carolina University. She received a doctorate in Comparative Literature with certificates in Feminist Theory and Translation from SUNY Binghamton. Her academic work has appeared in numerous anthologies and peer-reviewed journals.

Patrick Sylvain

Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American writer, essayist and poet, and instructor of Haitian language and culture at Brown University's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He has been published in several anthologies, magazines and reviews, including African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Haitian Times and Ploughshares.

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

Event Series: Transition Magazine

Born in Africa and bred in the diaspora, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling, most curious ideas about race. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the black world and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate. Now, in an age that demands ceaseless improvisation, they aim to be both an anchor of deep reflection on black life and a map charting new routes through the globalized world.

Transition is a publication of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, published three times annually by Indiana University Press. Find Transition on Twitter at @Transition_Mag and on the web at http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/transition. Transition partners with Harvard Book Store several times a year for a discussion based on their latest issue.

Event Co-Sponsor(s)

Hutchins Center for African and African American Research: http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/

General Info
(617) 661-1515
info@harvard.com

Media Inquiries
mediainquiries@harvard.com

Accessibility Inquiries
access@harvard.com

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An Evening with Transition Magazine

Date

Location

Tickets

John Warner Smith

Marame Gueye

Patrick Sylvain

Classic Totes

Shipping & Pickup

Noteworthy Signed Books: Join the Club!

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