Literary | Talks
Saeed Jones
- 7PM
Single Tickets
In conversation with Lynn Nottage
With opening reading by Jada Wilkinson (BAM Arts and Justice)
Launch of How We Fight for Our Lives
Co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore
Poet Saeed Jones is joined in conversation by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage to celebrate the launch of his new memoir. In How We Fight for Our Lives, Jones shares his story of a young, black, gay man from the South who fights to carve out a place for himself within his family, within his country, and within his own hopes, desires, and fears.
The evening’s program opens with a reading by Jada Wilkinson, a youth poet from BAM’s Arts & Justice program. Following the moderated discussion, the audience is invited to participate in the conversation. A book signing with Jones will follow.
Saeed Jones is the author of the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, which won numerous awards and was a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Until Spring 2019, Jones was a co-host of BuzzFeed’s morning show AM to DM and previously served as its LGBT editor and culture editor. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He lives in New York City and tweets @TheFerocity.
Playwright and screenwriter Lynn Nottage is the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, for her plays Sweat and Ruined. Her other plays include Mlima's Tale; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF!. She is currently working with composer Ricky Ian Gordon to adapt Intimate Apparel into an opera. She was a writer and producer on the first season of Netflix’s She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee.