PASSAGES: On Morrison Live Podcast with Namwali Serpell and Saeed Jones

Join us for an electrifying conversation about the work of Toni Morrison with critic, novelist, and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell (author of ON MORRISON) and memoirist, poet and Vibe Check co-host Saeed Jones. This conversation will be taped for the Passages: On Morrison podcast.

Praise for ON MORRISON

“In this lavish yet clear-eyed study, Serpell shows how Morrison breathed new life into the novel. This is literary criticism at its finest.”—Time
“Serpell puts Morrison’s genius on full display. This will enthrall Morrison fans.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black female writer—and her work is highly complex.” In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form.
This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre—her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry—with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence.

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Furrows, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University.

Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight For Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner for the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. His poetry and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Oxford American and GQ among other publications. His most recent book, Alive at the End of the World, won the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry. He teaches creative writing in the Media, Medicine and Health program at Harvard Medical School and co-hosts the podcast VIBE CHECK with Zach Stafford. His next book HOME OUT THERE is forthcoming from Washington Square Press.

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