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MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy
Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or at w-leopold@northwestern.edu
March 23, 2004
Conference to Examine Fiction by Black Authors
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Author Sheree R. Thomas put an end to the myth
that African Americans don’t write science fiction four years
ago when her 427-page anthology titled “Dark Matter: A Century
of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora” was published.
Thomas will be among the panelists Friday, April 16, at “The Politics of
the Paraliterary: A Symposium of Afro Diasporic Speculative Fiction and Theory” at
Northwestern University.
The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will explore the contributions
of black writers from around the world to the genres of science fiction, horror,
fantasy, futurism and magical realism. It will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. in Room
107 of Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road, Evanston.
The event follows by a day the April 15 free, public lecture by prominent African
American science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany. That event will be held at
4:30 p.m. in the Abbott Auditorium, Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life
Sciences Pavilion, 2200 Campus Drive.
The speculative literature conference also
will include panelists Kodwo Eshun,
author of “More Brilliant than the Sun,” a treatise on futurism in
black popular music; Yale University assistant professor Alondra Nelson, co-editor
of “Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life” and founder
and moderator of an Internet discussion group called AfroFuturism; and Village
Voice staff writer Greg Tate, author of “Flyboy in the Buttermilk” and “Midnight
Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience.”
Symposium participants
will discuss recent artistic and academic developments concerned with images
of the future and with questions of race and technology
as envisioned by black authors, including Delany, Steven Barnes, Octavia Butler,
Tananarive Due, Jewelle Gomez, Nalo Hopkinson, Brandon Massey and Walter Mosley.
For further information, contact the English department at (847)
491-7294.
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