Barbara Ballinger Lecture: Sandra Jackson-Opoku & Tracy Clark

Name: Barbara Ballinger Lecture: Sandra Jackson-Opoku & Tracy Clark
Start: 2025-12-20T11:00:00-06:00
End: 2025-12-20T12:30:00-06:00
Location: 834 Lake St., Oak Park, IL, United States, Illinois 60301

Schedule

Sat Dec 20 2025 at 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

834 Lake St., Oak Park, IL, United States, Illinois 60301 | Oak Park, IL

Each year, we gather to celebrate and recognize former head librarian Barbara Ballinger and her 32 years of dedicated service to the library and to Oak Park.
Celebrate this year's Barbara Ballinger Lecture with Sandra Jackson-Opoku and Tracy Clark, who join us for a thrilling conversation about their new releases, "Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes" (Jackson-Opoku) and "Edge: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller" (Clark).
Books will be available for purchase through the Book Loft. This event is presented in part by the generous support of the Friends of the Oak Park Public Library.
REGISTER TO ATTEND: https://oakpark.librarycalendar.com/event/copy-hold-ballinger-114553
More about Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Sandra Jackson-Opoku is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. Her novels include "The River Where Blood Is Born," which won an American Library Association Black Caucus Literary Award, and "Hot Johnny (and the Women Who Loved Him)." Jackson-Opoku’s own writing on the cultures of the African diaspora has been published widely.
Jackson-Opoku is the recipient of honors and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the American Antiquarian Society. She won the CCLM/General Electric Fiction Award for Younger Writers. On faculty at Chicago State University, Jackson-Opaku has taught for institutions and organizations such as Columbia College Chicago, the University of Miami, Nova Southeastern University, the Writer’s Studio at the University of Chicago, the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and the Hurston/Wright Writers Workshop.
More about Tracy Clark
Tracy Clark, a native Chicagoan, is the author of the award-winning Cass Raines Chicago Mystery series, featuring ex-cop-turned-PI Cassandra Raines, and the Detective Harriet Foster series, featuring Harriet Foster, a homicide detective with the Chicago Police Department. Two tough, smart, African American female characters working the mean streets of the Windy City.
A multi-nominated Anthony, Lefty, Macavity, Edgar and Shamus Award finalist, Tracy is also the 2020 and 2022 winner of the G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award, as well as the 2022 Sara Paretsky Award, and is a proud member of Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and currently serves on the Bouchercon national board and the board of the Midwest Mystery Conference.