5th Annual Ashley Bryan Lecture: Anthony Walton

Description

The Annual Ashley Bryan Lecture is named in honor of the late printmaker, author, puppet maker, painter, storyteller, and illustrator Ashley Bryan, who devoted his life to bringing people together through art. This yearly lecture brings a distinguished artist or critic of color whose work reflects similarly this deep interest in racial equity to discuss that work with the Downeast Maine community. The featured speaker for the 2025 Ashley Bryan Honorary Lecture is the poet and writer Anthony Walton. He is perhaps best known as the author of The End of Respectability and Mississippi: An American Journey as well as a chapbook of poems, Cricket Weather. His work has appeared widely in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Oxford American, the New York Times, Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, and Times Literary Supplement. He is also the coauthor, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, of the best-selling Brothers-in-Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, and coeditor, with Michael S. Harper, of The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry. He is currently a professor and the writer-in-residence at Bowdoin College. To find out more about the Ashley Bryan Lecture as well as how to support this event in years to come visit jesuplibrary.org/ashleybryan.