Teaching Black:The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature (UPittsburgh)

Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature (UPittsburgh) presents the experiences and voices of Black creative writers who are also teachers. The authors in this collection engage poetry, fiction, experimental literature, playwriting, and literary criticism. They provide historical and theoretical interventions and practical advice for teachers and students of literature and craft. Contributors work in high schools, colleges, and community settings and draw from these rich contexts in their essays. This book is an invaluable tool for teachers, practitioners, change agents, and presses. Teaching Black is for any and all who are interested in incorporating Black literature and conversations on Black literary craft into their own work.  

Virtual Panel – open to the public: Tuesday April 18, 11:00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m.

This panel features editors and contributors of Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature presents the experiences and voices of Black creative writers who are also teachers. The authors in this collection engage poetry, fiction, experimental literature, playwriting, and literary criticism. They provide historical and theoretical interventions and practical advice for teachers and students of literature and craft. Contributors work in high schools, colleges, and community settings and draw from these rich contexts in their essays. This book is an invaluable tool for teachers, practitioners, change agents, and presses. Teaching Black is for any and all who are interested in incorporating Black literature and conversations on Black literary craft into their own work. Featuring Gabrielle Civil, drea brown and Ana-Maurine Lara.

GABRIELLE CIVIL is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over fifty performance artworks around the world including the déjà vu—live (2022), Jupiter (2021), and Vigil (2021). Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), (ghost gestures) (2021), and the déjà vu (2022). Her writing has appeared in Teaching Black, New Daughters of Africa, Kitchen Table Translation, and Experiments in Joy: a Workbook. A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.  

drea brown is a queer Black feminist poet-scholar whose writing has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Stand Our Ground: Poems for Marissa Alexander and Trayvon Martin, the Smithsonian Magazine, Southern Indiana Review, Bellingham Review and About Place Journal. drea is the author of dear girl: a reckoning, winner of the Gold Line Press 2014 chapbook prize, and co-editor of Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature (2021). Their current research explores the role of haunting in Black women’s literature and lived experiences.