The Stories We Tell, The Stories We Write: An Evening with Clint Smith

The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College & Yonkers Public Library present: "The Stories We Tell, The Stories We Write: An evening with bestselling author Clint Smith & Kishauna Soljour."

Join us for this virtual event celebrating the importance of oral history and its impact on storytelling in our country.

[Register for the event, which can be attended via Zoom or in person for a Zoom Viewing Party at the Barbara Walters Campus Center, through Sarah Lawrence College.](https://apply.slc.edu/register/StoriesWeTell2022)

How can oral history unlock the stories around us? As writers and readers, what does it look like to honor the power of storytelling through oral history? Join Clint Smith, bestselling author of How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History of Slavery Across America, and Sarah Lawrence College faculty member and Yonkers Public Library Public Humanities Fellow Dr. Kishauna Soljour for an intimate conversation on how oral history can offer a new understanding of our country’s history and the stories we tell. This event will include an audience Q & A.

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere.

Dr. Kishauna Soljour joined Sarah Lawrence College as a Public Humanities Fellow and member of the history faculty in 2020. Dr. Soljour has a special interest in the history of the modern African diaspora in the West, oral history, NGO and nonprofit management, and transnational history, as well as the history of social movements and race. As a Public Humanities Fellow, she has led oral history projects with students and teens at the Yonkers Public Library and curated Rooted: A Community Archive Project to present a multi-layered story about identity, community, and history within Yonkers. Dr. Soljour is the author of Beyond the Banlieue: French Postcolonial Migration & the Politics of a Sub-Saharan Identity, amanuscript that was awarded The Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in Humanities and Fine Arts. She holds a BA, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Syracuse University.