Kiese Laymon to speak at @Noon Series

The Wayne State University English department's @Noon Reading Series, in collaboration with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, will be hosting critically acclaimed writer Kiese Laymon on Sept. 14 from 12 noon to 1 p.m. in Bernath Auditorium.

Laymon is a Black southern writer born and raised in Mississippi, and associate professor of Africana Studies and English at Vassar College. He is the author of two books: Long Division, a coming-of-age novel set in post-Katrina Mississippi, and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, a collection of essays that explore the interconnected workings of family, history, race, violence, masculinity, love, celebrity and identity.

He has written numerous essays and stories appearing in a variety of print and electronic publications. One of his most recent essays, in response to the Charleston shootings, can be found in The Guardian. In a contemporary moment when activists and organizers in the #BlackLivesMatter movement are so powerfully illuminating and resisting all forms of state violence against black people, Laymon's writing offers compelling meditations on how this nation's history and present shape the possibilities and limits of love and forgiveness in the face of such violence and invites us to imagine our way forward.

While in Detroit, Laymon will give two readings. On Sunday, Sept. 13, he will give a reading at the Wright Museum at 6 p.m. On Monday, Sept. 14, he will give a reading at noon on Wayne State's campus in the Bernath Auditorium. Co-sponsored by the Departments of African American Studies and History, the Center for the Study of Citizenship, and the Humanities Center, the reading is free and open to the public.