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| Author Randall Kenan will be the keynote speaker at Fire & Ink, IV in Detroit. |
October 8-11, Detroit, MI
"Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have."
—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Keynote speaker Randall Kenan is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits; two works of non-fiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time; and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the North Carolina Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Fire & Ink IV: Witness is a writers festival that will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century. Merriam-Webster offers these definitions of "witness": One that gives evidence. One who is present at an event and can say that it happened. One who testifies in a cause. An attestation of fact. One who has personal knowledge of something. Public affirmation by word or example of usually religious faith or conviction. We invite Black LGBTQ and SGL writers and artists to assay their own definitions of witness.
Fire & Ink is a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of the works of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender writers of African descent and heritage.
