AG Literary Events
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
6:30 pm Eastern
McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St, New York, New York
“I see our mission as both a political and creative one,” says documentary filmmaker Michèle Stephenson. “To leave a legacy of untold stories that we can share and that validate our existence and our cultures.”
Join Stephenson and award-winning author Edwidge Danticat, whose new collection of essays is We’re Alone, for a conversation on art-making that bears witness, the possibilities of community, and a shared interest in mixing personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to ancestors and artistic heroes like Nikki Giovanni to tell their stories.
“Danticat writes with compassionate insight but without a trace of sentimentality. Her prose is energetic, her vision is clear, and the tragedies seem to speak for themselves,” wrote The Miami Herald.
This event is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Authors Guild Foundation and McNally Jackson, where we gather writers for conversations that highlight the importance of a rich, diverse literary culture and the authors who contribute to it, and provide a space for writers and readers to connect in-person.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, Krik? Krak!, and The Farming of Bones. She has written seven books for children and young adults, a travel narrative, After the Dance; and a collection of essays, Create Dangerously. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Her story collection, Everything Inside, was a 2020 winner of The Story Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Prize. Her most recent book, We’re Alone, will be published by Graywolf Press in September 2024.
Michèle Stephenson, a filmmaker, artist, and author, pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots and experience as a social justice lawyer to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. In 2023, she had two films Oscar shortlisted – the feature documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and premiered on MAX; and her ESPN short, Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games, which won Best Short Doc at the Tribeca Festival. Her feature documentary, American Promise, was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Her film, Stateless, was nominated for a Canadian Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Stephenson also co-directed the magical realist virtual reality trilogy series, The Changing Same, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier XR Program, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Immersive Narrative at the Tribeca Festival, and was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Interactive Media Innovative category. Along with her writing partners, Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, Stephenson won an NAACP Image Award for Excellence in a Literary Work for their book, Promises Kept. In 2024, she received the NYWIFT Nancy Malone Muse Directing Award. Currently, Stephenson is in post-production on a feature on the Black Power movement in Canada. She is a Guggenheim Artist Fellow, a Creative Capital Artist, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
