International Black Writers Festival returns

By Kelvin Childs

Bigger than before, the International Black Writers Festival returned to Howard, extending over three days, including a book fair on The Yard!

“The Story of Us” was the theme for this fourth edition of the IBWF. The IBWF exalts Black literature and storytelling with performances, readings, student highlights and panel discussions on fiction, poetry, theater, A.I. and technology. The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, which houses the nation’s premier collections of books, documents and ephemera about the global Black experience, hosted the affair.

Among the offerings was “The Gordon Parks Panel: A Poet and His Camera,” moderated by Melanee C. Harvey, PhD, associate professor of art history in the Department of Art in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. Harvey is curator of the “Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life” exhibition currently in the Howard Museum at Founders Library, also hosted by MSRC.

Confirmed speakers for the IBWF included editor and novelist Clarence A. Haynes, NAACP nominee and USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins, sociologist and professor Ruha Benjamin, National Book Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson, and actor, director and choreographer LeeAnét Noble (’03, BFA). Also included was the pop-up “The Library of Black Narratives.” 

Opening day also offered a public book fair on The Yard featuring Sankofa Video Books & Café; Turning the Page: Carpe Librum Bookstores; the Shaw/Watha T. Daniel branch of the District of Columbia Public Library; and Black Business Blooms DC. Each day also provided networking lunches so patrons could meet the presenters, moderators, authors and poets.

The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, host of the International Black Writers Festival, collects Black literature in all its forms. A donation to MSRC supports the ambitions of authors and other creators, past and present: Moorland-Spingarn Research Center