In 2021, Just Buffalo Literary Center once again launches THE CIVIL WRITES PROJECT with a series of interconnected community events that open conversations, encourage reading and writing, and invite widespread community participation around BABEL visits from the world’s foremost Black & African-American writers.
Virtual BABEL: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Join Just Buffalo for a BABEL like no other as we welcome bestselling author and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Ta-Nehisi Coates for a virtual conversation with Artistic Director Barbara Cole.
TA-NEHISI COATES: BLACK PANTHER
Join The Wakanda Alliance as we journey through the depth and impact of Coates’s Black Panther series through group reading, visualization exercises, and Afrofuturist thought shaping, developing deeper conversations around Blackness, Sci-Fi, and Afrofuturism.
VIRTUAL FREEDOM CONVERSATION TOUR (04.10.2021)
Rooted in stories of the Underground Railroad in Niagara Falls, the Heritage Center’s live, virtual tour led by Saladin Allah sparks conversation and offers a space to consider the relationship between race, human rights, and freedom.
LUCILLE CLIFTON’S BUFFALO
Lucille Clifton’s work is deeply embedded in the geographical and social landscape of Buffalo. We will do some generative writing in response to prompts shaped by Clifton’s work, and share some of that writing.
TOUR & WRITING WORKSHOP
Rooted in stories of the Underground Railroad in Niagara Falls, the Heritage Center’s live, virtual tours spark conversation and offer a space to consider the relationship between race, human rights, and freedom. After a 45-minute virtual tour led by Saladin Allah, join teaching artist Annette Daniels Taylor for a 45-minute thematic writing session.
TA-NEHISI COATES READING GROUP
Facilitated by Steven Peraza. All sessions will be virtual via Zoom. Note: These events are sold out.
TELLING THE STORY (THROUGH MAY 2021)
This Rare Book Room exhibit at Buffalo & Erie County Public Library’s Central Library seeks to highlight its History of Slavery Collection and, perhaps more ambitiously, to provoke constructive dialog about our country’s history of enslavement and its continuing aftermath.