Join poet and scholar Clint Smith and poet and novelist Destiny O. Birdsong for a reading and discussion of Smith’s new book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, on Thursday, July 8, at 7PM EDT.
Smith, a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine, is featured in the July/August 2021 issue: In “How We Remember” Birdsong traces Smith’s beginnings as a poet—his first book, published in 2017, was the poetry collection Counting Descent—and how his nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed, started out as an idea for a collection of poems but grew to become an exploration of the legacy of slavery alive in monuments and landmarks within and beyond the United States, culminating in an immersive read that exquisitely depicts how a nation and its inhabitants remember its history.
Smith will read from the new book and discuss its resonant themes of history and memory with Birdsong, who will also field questions from the audience. Smith’s book will be available for purchase via our partner bookseller, Community Book Center in New Orleans.
This event is free. RSVP now to receive the Zoom link.
Time/format: Thursday, July 8, at 7PM EDT on Zoom
Clint Smith is the author of the New York Times best-seller How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, published in June by Little, Brown. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, was published by Write Bloody Publishing in 2016. It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, and was selected as the 2017 One Book One New Orleans book selection. Smith is a staff writer at the Atlantic. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, Poetry, the Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review. Smith was named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as Ebony Magazine’s 2017 Power 100 list. His two TED Talks, “The Danger of Silence” and “How to Raise a Black Son in America,” collectively have been viewed more than nine million times.
Destiny O. Birdsong is a poet, novelist, and essayist whose work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, African American Review, and Catapult, among other publications. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published in 2020 by Tin House and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, is forthcoming in February 2022 from Grand Central Publishing.