2017 National Black Writers Conference Biennial Symposium

Deadline: Friday, December 16th, 2016

For the 2017 NBWC Biennial Symposium, the Center for Black Literature invites poets, writers, independent researchers, interested faculty and students to submit proposals that examine the life of Gwendolyn Brooks and the themes in her works. Proposals may include but are not limited to the following subjects:

• Brooks was a socially conscious African-American poet whose most recognized works in the 1950s and 1960s were created from the challenging times Blacks faced in America and also represented a portrait of the people that surrounded her. More than 65 year later, with the establishment of the Black Lives Matter movement, in what ways does Brooks’s poems, prose, and community activism resonate in today’s society.
• In his book Honoring Genius, Gwendolyn Brooks: The Narrative of Craft, Art, Kindness and Justice, Haki R. Madhubuti writes: “Ms. Brooks was a woman who could not live without her art, but who had never put her art above or before the people she wrote about.” With this reflection in mind, examine the ways in which Brooks’s prose and poetry reflect the human experience as well as the experiences of Blacks in America.

For more info click here.