Book Launch for Dr. Edith Rock Writing Workshop for Elders

As part of its John Oliver Killens Reading Series monthly program, the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College (CBL) will present a special event featuring members of the Dr. Edith Rock Writing Workshop for Elders program. Thirteen writers from New York City and beyond are featured in Tales of Our Times Anthology. The Year 2020: Looking Back for Healing, Looking Forward with Hope. The recently published anthology (Fall/Winter 2022) will celebrate the upcoming twentieth anniversary of the workshop in 2023 as well as insightful and sometimes humorous reflections from a special population within the larger African American community—writers 60 years and older. The free, in-person event will take place on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm ET at Medgar Evers College (in the Edison O. Jackson Auditorium located at 1638 Bedford Avenue in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY). Attendees will enjoy select readings from the anthology, a discussion followed by a question-and-answer session, and a book-signing. All are welcome.

The Tales of Our Times anthology will include a section titled Letters to America. Some of the works in that section are Time for a Change by Lena E. Hall; Oh, America! by Ebun Adelona; When Will You Be Ready? by Shirley V. H. Cooper; Wake Up, America by Joan Corbett; Sadness by William Craig; Letter to America by Elder Flournoy II; What Is America to Thee by Rebecca Plunkett; The Satin-Lined Coffin by Glenda Pollard; Letter to America by Teresa M. Snyder; Aim by Claudette Joy Spence; Greetings, America by Sylvia Jones Suescan; and Greetings, America by Cynthia Goodison Tompkins.

The Dr. Edith Rock Writing Workshop for Elders, founded in 2003, is intended to preserve the memoirs of elders throughout the African Diaspora whose lives span a major part of the twentieth century and beyond. The workshop began as the Writing Project for Older African Americans. Its purpose was to gather information from older African Americans whose history is likely to be distorted or lost for lack of original documentation. At the workshop, members are encouraged to recall the past so that their recollections would be crafted into inspirational memoirs and stories. To date, the workshop has published five anthologies. Eisa Nefertari Ulen is the long-time coordinator of the program.

The Dr. Edith Rock Writing Workshop for Elders is sponsored by the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY; Poets & Writers; and the Amazon Literary Partnership. The Center receives generous support from the NYC Council Brooklyn Delegation and the Office of NYC Council Member Charles Barron. Also, the Center for Black Literature is supported in part by an American Rescue Plan Act grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support general operating expenses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Host or Publisher Center for Black Literature | Medgar Evers College