Unbound Book Launch Series Returns This Fall

Unbound: A Book Launch Series with BAM and Greenlight Bookstore returns this fall with three engaging events. Authors N.K. Jemisin and Ijeoma Oluo will discuss their work on September 24; Staceyann Chin will launch her latest release in conversation with Eve Ensler on October 1; and Saeed Jones will discuss his new book with Lynn Nottage on October 7. Tickets for Unbound events go on sale to BAM members on August 27 and to the public on August 29 and can be purchased through BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100 or at BAM.org

Three-time Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin and The New York Times best-selling author Ijeoma Oluo come together in celebration of the paperback releases of How Long 'til Black Future Month? and So You Want to Talk About Race. The authors consider the present and future of race, challenging oppressive societies by addressing and imagining the experiences of those who live within them.

Celebrated science fiction and fantasy writer N.K. Jemisin took the title of How Long 'til Black Future Month? from her 2013 essay on Afrofuturism. This 22-story collection (the author's first), called "marvelous and wide-ranging" by the Los Angeles Times, challenges readers with narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption, providing a sharp look at modern society. It follows Jemisin's New York Times best-selling Inheritance and Broken Earth trilogies-all three volumes in the Broken Earth series won the Hugo Award for best novel, three years in a row-a first. According to The New York Times, "Her visions are epic, full of cosmic battles, ruptured societies and (literally) earth-moving powers."

Ijeoma Olou's best-selling So You Want to Talk About Race was described by The New York Times as "taking on the thorniest questions surrounding race, from police brutality to who can use the 'N' word." The National Review of Books said, "I simply hope this book is handed out at institutions and workplaces everywhere as required reading..." Oluo's writings on feminism, race, economics, and social justice have been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, ELLE, The Guardian, and other outlets.

Curated by poet and spoken-word artist Staceyann Chin, Crossfire: A Litany for Survival collects Chin's empowering, feminist-LGBTQ-Caribbean, activist-driven poetry for the first time in a single book. The full-length collection by the "out poet and political activist," features more than 50 of Chin's pieces, as well as a foreword by Jacqueline Woodson, and advance praise from Rosanne Cash and Walter Mosley. According to The New York Times, Chin is "sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking." The Advocate says that her poems, "combine hilarious one-liners with a refusal to conform" and note "Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world." Edwidge Danticat called Crossfire "a remarkable collection from a dynamic and talented writer, whose urgent storytelling and commanding voice feel vital for our times." The evening will include a performance of Chin's work, a discussion with Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), an audience Q&A, and book signing.

Poet, actor, and performing artist Staceyann Chin is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Other Side of Paradise and author of the one-woman shows Hands Afire, Unspeakable Things, Border/Clash, and MotherStruck. Her poetry has been featured in The New York Times and Washington Post. Chin proudly identifies as Caribbean, Black, Asian, lesbian, a woman, and a resident of New York City, as well as a Jamaican national.

Eve Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist. She is the author of the international phenomenon The Vagina Monologues and the founder of V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. Her latest book The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal.

Award-winning poet Saeed Jones' memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, is the coming-out-of-age story of a young, gay Black man from the South. It winds through his journey as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence-into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Renowned playwright Lynn Nottage joins him for a discussion.

Saeed Jones is the author of Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and was nominated for the Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Until spring 2019, Jones was a co-host of BuzzFeed's morning show, AM to DM, and previously served as BuzzFeed's LGBT and culture editor. Jones was born in Memphis and grew up in Lewisville, TX. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in New York City and tweets @TheFerocity.

Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter, and the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Her plays include Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award), which moved to Broadway after a sold-out run at The Public Theater, Mlima's Tale (Outer Critics Circle nomination), By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award, Drama Desk nomination), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, Obie), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Obie), Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por'knockers, and POOF!. She was writer/producer on the first season of Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee. Nottage is a member of the Dramatists Guild, an associate professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, and the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship

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