Mary Tefft White Cultural Center

Campus Poetry Walk Community Event and Reception

Featuring distinguished poet, Rosanna Warren

We welcome Rosanna Warren to give a celebratory reading for the second annual Campus Poetry Walk with the theme: Seeking Kindness in Ourselves and Others. Warren has won the Lamont Poetry Prize and many other awards for her poetry. She is the author of five books of poems, including Departure, Stained Glass, Each Leaf Shines Separate and Ghost In A Red Hat. Harold Bloom writes: “Warren is an important poet, beyond the achievement of all but a handful of living American poets.” And Charles Simic writes in The NY Review of Books: “Her work has become stronger and stronger… The new book explores intimacy and separation in poems of difficult love….masterful and ambitious.” Until recently Rosanna Warren was University Professor at Boston University and is now a Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at University of Chicago.

Time: Tuesday, April 16, 2024 (4:30 PM)
Location: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

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2023-2024 Bermont Family Distinguished Visiting Author – Phillip Lopate 

Phillip Lopate is a central figure in the recent revival of interest in memoir writing and what has come to be called “the personal essay.” Lopate is the author of Portrait of My Body, Confessions of Summer, Against Joie de Vivre, The Rug Merchant, Being with Children, and Totally Tenderly Tragically. He is also the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay and was the series editor of The Anchor Essay Annual. Lopate’s work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize Series. Recent books include To Show and Tell, Portrait Inside My Head, Waterfront, Getting Personal: Selected Writings and Notes On Sontag. In 2023, he published A Year and a Day: An Experiment in Essays. Lopate formerly directed the non-fiction MFA program at Columbia University.

Time: Monday, April 8, 2024 (7:00 PM)
Location: Rogers Free Library - 525 Hope Street, Bristol RI

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The 2023-2024 Professor John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Lecture  

"Where Ann Petry Came From: How the Novelist's Family and Community Shaped Her"

Dr. Jesse Nasta, Assistant Professor of the Practice in African American Studies, Wesleyan University

Ann Petry is best knowing for authoring The Street (1946), the first novel by an African American woman to sell a million copies. The Street and Petry's subsequent novels changed American and African American literature. As this talk will show, this remarkable writer came from an equally remarkable family. The descendant of self-emancipated enslaved people who made new lives in Connecticut in the Civil War era, Petry's forbearers distinguished themselves in medicine, business, and education, inspiring the stories that Ann Petry wrote and the person she became.

Jesse Nasta, PhD, specializes in the history of slavery, emancipation, and their aftermaths, with a particular emphasis on New England. He has been a professor in Wesleyan University’s African American Studies Department since 2017 and is Executive Director of the Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown, Connecticut. He will be speaking as a personal friend and research collaborator of Ann Petry's daughter, Elisabeth Petry (1949-2023).

Time: Thursday, March 28, 2024 (2:00 PM)
Location: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

Co-sponsored by the Professor John Howard Birss Memorial Fund; and the Mary Tefft White Endowment

“The Danger of Misinformation: Freedom of Expression, Democracy, and Global Crises”

Alfred Babo, a refugee scholar from Cote d’Ivoire and Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Fairfield University, will discuss how propaganda and lying in the political arena undermine freedom of expression and democracy, as well as their potential to disturb the social order through conflicts, wars, and the direct impact on people’s lives—from refugees to students. The talk will be followed by a Q & A period.

For more insights on Alfred Babo, please consider this episode from the International Science Council’s “Science in Exile” podcast series, in which Dr. Babo explores why scholars may be targeted in periods of civil unrest and how higher education suffers in particular.

Date: Thursday, October 19, 2023
Time: 2:00 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

"Rewriting Ukrainian History: Scholars Under Pressures of Legacy, Politics, and War"

Liz (Ielyzaveta) Shchepetylnykova is a long-standing civil society activist and researcher of higher education in Ukraine. She will discuss her study of challenges experienced by Ukrainian historians amid Russia’s deliberate efforts to recast Ukrainian history, culture, and identity to meet its political objectives and ambitions. An opportunity for Q & A will follow the talk.

For those interested in more context and background, please see the article, “Is Academic Freedom Feasible in the Post-Soviet Space of Higher Education?” from the journal Education Philosophy and Theory.
 

Date: Monday, November 6, 2023
Time: 2:00 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

 Talking Beyond the Library

Talking in the Library Lecture Series - Spring Semester 2023

“Writing & Political Activism: the work of South African writer Nadine Gordimer” 

 In partnership with the John H. Birss endowment and Salmagundi, this virtual keynote will celebrate the work and life of Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, marking the 100^th anniversary of her birth.

The panel (pictured above) will feature acclaimed novelist Claire Messud, editor of Salmagundi Magazine Robert Boyers, and literary critic and essayist James Wood.

Time: March 8, 2023 (7:00 PM)

 Place: Virtual 

“Celebrating the Spaces We Live In” 

 As part of RWU’s first “Poetry Walk,” three term United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will give a celebratory reading. As a three-time US Poet Laureate, Pinsky notably founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans — of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state — shared their favorite poems. Elegant and tough, vividly imaginative, Pinsky’s poems have earned praise for their wild musical energy and range. Selected Poems (FSG, 2011) is a collection that spans his career. His The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Robert Pinsky’s landmark, best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation. He is also co-translator of The Separate Notebooks, poems by Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. In addition to being the only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on “The Simpsons” and “The Colbert Report,” Pinsky has been a regular contributor to PBS’s The News- Hour, and he publishes frequently in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review and The Best American Poetry anthologies. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.

Date and Time: April 18, (4:30 PM)
Location: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

 Talking in the Library Lecture Series - Fall Semester 2022

“Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting”

Kevin Blackistone is a columnist for the Washington Post, a regular panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn, and often a guest on NPR and the PBS News Hour. A professor of the practice at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, he has recently released a new documentary film that he co-wrote and produced about the Native American “mascoting” in sports. Kevin will be in conversation with RWU’s Dr. Brian Hendrickson, Assistant Professor in Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition. 

Date and Time:  Thursday, September 29, at 4:30 PM.
Location: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

Steve Yarbrough

Steve Yarbrough is the author of twelve books, most recently the novel Stay Gone Days (2022). Writes the New York Times, "Yarbrough, who has been likened to Faulkner for his attention to Mississippi (and whose novel Prisoners of War was a finalist for the 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award) nimbly illustrates what the past can tell us about the present.” The recipient of numerous awards, and formerly on faculty at Emerson College, Yarbrough splits his time between Boston and Krakow.

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 4, at 7:00PM
Location: Rogers Free Library 525 Hope Street, Bristol RI

Talking in the Library Lecture Series - Spring Semester 2022

"Two places - The Inside Room and the Outside Room" 

The John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Lecture, in association with the Carson McCullers Centers at Columbus State University, invites you to an evening of discussion about Carson McCullers, her work, and her lasting impact.

Panelists are Karen Allen (actor and director); Carlos Dews (editor of McCullers' unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night; Nick Norwood (Director of the Carson MCCullers Center); and Jenn Shapland (author of the autobiographical memoir "My Autobiography of Carson McCullers.")

Date: March 1, 2022
Time 4:30 PM (EST)

Sigrid Nunez – Novelist and 2018 National Book Award Winner

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In France, it was longlisted for the 2019 Prix Femina and named a finalist for the 2019 Prix du Meilleure Livre. It has also been longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. Nunez’s other honors and awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and the Rome Prize in Literature. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Tin House, The Believer and newyorker.com. Nunez has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, Syracuse, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. Currently, she lives in New York City.

Date: Friday, April 1, 2022
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Rogers Free Library, 525 Hope Street, Bristol RI

Co-sponsored by: The Bermont Fellowship, the Jane Bodel Endowment, and the Mary Tefft White Endowment

Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up

Sarah Schulman - Novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer and AIDS historian

In conversation with Dr. Jason Jacobs Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Roger Williams University

Virtual Event

Tuesday September 28, 2021 7:00 PM EST
This event is free and open to the public.

On Mourning and Exile: Looking Back at Rwanda

Scholastique Mukasonga - Novelist & memoirist

In conversation with Dr. Timothy Longman, Director of the Institute on Culture Religion and World Affairs, Boston University.

Presented in association with the African Studies Association and Archipelago Books.

Virtual Event

Thursday October 28, 2021 4:00 PM EST
This event is free and open to the public.Virtual Event

The Voice of Poetry in Poems and Prose: A Reading and Conversation 

Michael Klein - Poet & nonfiction writer

Wednesday November 10, 2021 4:30 PM EST
In Person: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center,
University Library
This event is free and open to the public.

Due to COVID-19, the Spring 2021 programs will be held virtually and are open to all.

Talking in the Library & Scholars at Risk Present:

Dissident Daughters – The Humanitarian Effect of the Uyghur Crisis 

 In Conversation with:

Jewher Ilham
Daughter of Ilham Tohti  

Jewher Ilham graduated from Indiana University in May of 2019. As an advocate for her imprisoned father, she testified before the U.S. Congressional-Executive Committee on China, wrote op-eds in The New York Times. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, and works for the Worker Rights Consortium to Combat Forced Labor.

Akeda Pulati
Daughter of Rahile Dawut

Akeda Pulati was born in Urumqi in Xinjiang, and recently completed graduate school at the University of Washington. Her mother has been missing since 2017. Akeda recently accepted the Scholars at Risk Courage to Think award on her behalf.

Wednesday, March 3, 2021
7:00 PM
Via Zoom

Sponsored by Roger Williams University Library, the Mary Tefft White Cultural Center Lecture Series, and Scholars at Risk Student Advocacy Seminars  

This is event is free and open to the public.

"Talking About Race Through Storytelling & Music"

A keynote panel in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ernest J. Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman 

Danzy Senna is the author of five critically acclaimed books of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel, Caucasia, won the Book of the Month Award for First Fiction and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. The book was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Her other books include the novel, Symptomatic, the memoir, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History, and the short story collection, You Are Free. Her latest book, New People, is a subversive and engrossing novel of race, class, and manners in contemporary America. Named a 2017 Best Summer Read by Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar among others, New People was a Best Book of the Year for The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Time Magazine, and NPR.

Dr. Michael White is an accomplished, multi-faceted New Orleans-based clarinetist, bandleader, composer, musicologist, jazz historian, and educator widely regarded as one of the leading authorities and culture-bearers of traditional New Orleans jazz music. He has performed in over two dozen foreign countries, played on over 50 recordings, received countless awards, made multiple national television appearances, and been featured in major media publications. 

Cheylon Woods, Assistant Professor and Archivist/Head of Ernest J. Gaines Center, received her MLIS from LSU. After completion of her MA in Heritage Resources from Northwestern State University, she was awarded an IMLS (Institute of Museum & Library Studies) fellowship through The HistoryMakers (oral history archive based out of Chicago) where she was assigned to work as an Archivist at the Alabama State Department of Archives and History. She has presented at annual meetings for Society of American Archivists and worked on numerous public programs for the Alabama Department of Archives and History specializing in preservation and displaying historical documents and artifacts.

Danzy Senna, Michael White, and Cheylon Woods
Date: March 15, 2021
Time: 7:00 PM
Where: Virtual

Cosponsored by the John Howard Birss Memorial Fund; the Mary Tefft White “Talking in the Library” Endowment; The Gaines Center, University of Louisiana, Lafayette

Adam Haslett, Novelist and Short Story Writer

“A Reading and Conversation”

As part of the Bermont Fellowship for Fiction and Nonfiction, noted novelist Adam Haslett will offer a public reading and discussion. Haslett is the author of three works of fiction: Imagine Me Gone, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award; the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; and the novel Union Atlantic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. His books have been translated into eighteen languages, and his journalism on culture and politics have appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others.

Date:  Monday, March 22, 2021
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Virtual 

Cosponsored with the Bermont Fellowship for Fiction and Nonfiction; The Rogers Free Library Jane Bodell Endowment; and the Anthony Quinn Foundation

Responding to COVID-19: Lessons from the AIDS Epidemic 

Former US Congressman Henry Waxman in conversation with Boston Globe reporter Edward Fitzpatrick

Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: A virtual program. 

Henry Waxman served as the U.S. Representative for California’s 33rd Congressional district for over 40 years. He had the distinction of serving as Chairman and Ranking Member of the Energy & Commerce Committee and Committee on Oversight & Government Reform. He also served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. Congressman Waxman was instrumental in passing laws that range from the Clean Air Act of 1990, to the Affordable Care Act of 2010. In 1990, after a long battle over what seemed like government indifference to the AIDS epidemic, Congressman Waxman authored the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act (Ryan White CARE Act),  the largest federally funded program in the United States for people living with HIV/AIDS. He will talk about the parallels and lessons to be learned from his experiences about how the government can respond to public health crises.

Edward Fitzpatrick is a Boston Globe staff writer covering Rhode Island. He worked for 16 years at the Providence Journal, including eight years as the political columnist and five years as the courts reporter. Previously, he worked as director of media and public relations at Roger Williams University. He was a reporter at the Hartford Courant and the Albany Times Union, and he was the city editor at The Saratogian. A Rhode Island native, Fitzpatrick graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in magazine journalism and political science.

 Sponsored by: The Mary Tefft White Endowment

Robert Pinsky – Poet and Former US Poet Laureate

Serving three terms as the United States Poet Laurate, Robert Pinsky notably founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans — of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state — shared their favorite poems. Elegant and tough, vividly imaginative, Pinsky’s poems have earned praise for their wild musical energy and range. Selected Poems (FSG, 2011) is a collection that spans his career. His The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Robert Pinsky’s landmark, best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation. He is also co-translator of The Separate Notebooks, poems by Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. In addition to being the only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have appeared on “The Simpsons” and “The Colbert Report,” Pinsky has been a regular contributor to PBS  NewsHour, and he publishes frequently in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review and The Best American Poetry anthologies. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.

Date: Thursday, October 8, 2020
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: A virtual program

Sponsored by: The Mary Tefft White Endowment

Professor John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Keynote Lecture 

Fiction, Life, and The Red Badge of Courage

Dr. Christopher Benfey 

Christopher Benfey is the author of five highly regarded books about the American Gilded Age including The Double Life of Stephen Crane (1992) and A Summer of Hummingbirds. His most recent book, If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2019. Also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Benfey is a Guggenheim and the National Endowment for the Humanities fellow. He holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2020
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

Co-sponsored by the Professor John Howard Birss Memorial Fund, and the Mary Tefft White Endowment

Sigrid Nunez – Novelist and 2018 National Book Award Winner

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God,The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In France, it was longlisted for the 2019 Prix Femina and named a finalist for the 2019 Prix du Meilleure Livre. It has also been longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. Nunez’s other honors and awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and the Rome Prize in Literature. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal,The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Tin House, The Believer and newyorker.com. Nunez has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, Syracuse, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. Currently, she lives in New York City.

Date: Monday, April 6, 2020
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Rogers Free Library, 525 Hope Street, Bristol RI

Co-sponsored by: The Bermont Fellowship, the Jane Bodel Endowment, and the Mary Tefft White Endowment

"Tolerating Intolerance: What Can Roger Williams Teach Us Today"

Dr. Teresa Bejan

Associate Professor of Political Theory
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Oxford

Teresa M. Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory and a Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford. Before coming to Oxford, Dr Bejan served as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and as a Mellon Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University in 2013 and was awarded the American Political Science Association's Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in political philosophy. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, History of Political Thought, the Review of Politics, History of European Ideas, and the Oxford Review of Education, among other academic journals. In 2016, she was awarded the 7th annual Balzan-Skinner Fellowship in Modern Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge.

Date: Thursday, September 6, 2018
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center
Roger Williams University Library

Amy Wallen - Memoirist 

"In Conversation with Susan Tacent about Amy's new memoir When We Were Ghouls"

Amy E. Wallen is the Associate Director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga Springs, NY. She also teaches creative writing classes at UC San Diego Extension. She’s had essays published in The Gettysburg Review, The Normal School, Country Living and other national magazines and anthologies. Wallen’s first book, a novel called MoonPies & Movie Stars, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Rogers Free Library, 525 Hope St, Bristol, RI 02809
 
Co-sponsored by the Rogers Free Jane Bodell Endowment

Steve Almond – essayist and short story writer

“From Rage to the Page: How artists use their work to fight for freedom and dignity.”

Steve Almond is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His new book, Bad Stories is a literary investigation of “what the hell just happened to our country.” He wrote it to keep from going crazy. Almond hosts the New York Times “Dear Sugars” podcast with Cheryl Strayed, and is a frequent contributor on WBUR in Boston. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series.

Date: Thursday, October 25, 2018
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center
Roger Williams University Library

Hayat Alvi 

National Security Scholar

Dr. Alvi teaches the Theater Security and National Security Decision-Making courses: Security Strategies and Policy Analysis.  Dr. Alvi is also a scholar in the Greater Middle East Regional Studies Program at the Naval War College.  She has served as the Director of International Studies at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA.  Dr. Alvi also taught Political Science at the American University in Cairo, Egypt (2001-2005), and she has been a Fulbright Fellow in Damascus, Syria (1993-1994).  Dr. Alvi's specializations include International Relations, Political Economy, Comparative Politics, Islamic Studies, and Middle East and South Asian Studies.  She is proficient in Arabic and Urdu. Her most recent lecture was titled  "Female illiteracy and Malala.”

Date: March 20, 2018
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center
Roger Williams University Library

Garth Greenwell – Novelist

In conjunction with Rogers Free Library and the Bermont Family endowment, novelist Garth Greenwell will read from and discuss his most recent book, What Belongs to You.  Greenwell‘s debut novel won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into eleven languages. His short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others.

Date: April 9, 2018
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Rogers Free Library, Bristol RI

Cosponsored with the Bermont Fellowship for Fiction and Nonfiction; The Rogers Free Library Jane Bodell Endowment; and the Anthony Quinn Foundation

"Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice & the Black Panthers"

Kathleen Cleaver – Law Professor and Activist

As part of the 2017-2018 Birss selection, Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver (widow of Eldridge Cleaver) will deliver the annual lecture. Kathleen Cleaver, has spent her life participating in the human rights struggle. She started alongside her parents in the 1950s civil rights protests in Alabama. By 1966, Kathleen Neal dropped out of Barnard College in New York to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) where she served in its Campus Program based in Atlanta. She then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and from 1967 to 1971, she was the first Communications Secretary of the Black Panther Party. After sharing years of exile, in Algeria and France with former husband Eldridge Cleaver, she returned with her family to the United States in late 1975. She later earned her BA and JD at Yale University. Currently, she is on faculty at Emory University School of Law. 

Date: March 8, 2018
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center
Roger Williams University Library

Cosponsored with the John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Program

Birss Exhibition: Soul on Ice and the Black Panthers

Tim White 

Journalist/Investigative Reporter

Introduction by Arlene Violet

Tim White will discuss his recent book The Last Good Heist: The Inside Story Of The Biggest Single Payday In The Criminal History Of The Northeast. It tells the story of 1975’s infamous Bonded Vault Heist in Providence. The book tracks how Mob boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca approved the heist of a secret Mob bank in Providence. 

Date: September 19, 2017
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

Tina Cane 

Rhode Island Poet Laureate

In 2016, Tina Cane was selected to be Rhode Island’s Sixth Poet Laureate. She received a BA from the University of Vermont and an MA in French literature from Middlebury College. Tina is the author of The Fifth Thought (Other Painters Press, 2008), a book-length poem. She is the founder and director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. 

Date: November 2, 2017
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library

Jennifer Haigh 

Acclaimed Novelist

In conjunction with Rogers Free Library and the Jane Bodell endowment, novelist Jennifer Haigh will read and discuss her recent work. Haigh is the author of five books, most recently Heat and Light, a novel about a dying coal town that’s offered a second chance when the natural gas industry comes to town.  It has been named a Best Book of 2016 by The New York Times,The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and NPR.  

Date: November 6, 2017
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Rogers Free Library, Bristol RI

Vijay Seshadri 

2014 Pulitzer Prize Poet

Vijay Seshadri was born in Bangalore, India, in 1954 and moved to America at the age of five. He is the author of the poetry books "Wild Kingdom," "The Long Meadow," The Disappearances," and "3 Sections," as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. His work has been widely published and anthologized and recognized with many honors, most recently the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and, in 2015, the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was educated at Oberlin College and Columbia University, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, where he has held the Michele Tolela Myers Chair. 

Date: November 16, 2017
 Time: 4:30 PM
 Place: Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library