Celebrating Christmas in a Time of Fear

Join us and NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green for a Zoom discussion on one of James Baldwin’s essays, Equal in Paris, written shortly before Christmas 1949.

Jaki Shelton Green will facilitate a discussion exploring the themes in Baldwin’s work that continue to provide insights that illuminate our contemporary realities concerning America’s ongoing racial dilemma.

This essay will provide a different perspective and lens for reimagining Christmas this holiday season.

Co-sponsors for this event include:

Umstead Park United Church of Christ

First Presbyterian Church, Durham

New Hope Presbytery Peacemaking Committee

Jaki Shelton Green, ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina is the first African American  and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointment, 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jaki Shelton Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and has been named the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill. Her publications include: Dead on Arrival, Masks, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, Feeding the Light, i want to undie you. On Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP, poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst, produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records. Jaki Shelton Green is the owner of SistaWRITE providing writing retreats for women writers in Sedona Arizona, Martha’s Vineyard, Ocracoke North Carolina, Northern Morocco, and Tullamore Ireland.