Virtual Event: Selected Shorts presents Toni Morrison Remembered

 

Selected Shorts returns to Arts & Letters Live with a tribute to Toni Morrison, who died in August 2019. Her novels, including Beloved, Jazz, and Song of Solomon, have become an indelible part of the American canon. Her fierce, poetic visions articulated deep truths about racial injustice in America and earned her the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was also an editor, an advocate, a teacher, and a mother.

 

Hosted by award-winning author Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing, Transcendent Kingdom), the event will include Emmy Award–winning actor Joe Morton (Rowan/Eli Pope in Scandal), Tony Award–winning actor Anika Noni Rose (Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere), two-time Obie Award winner Charlayne Woodard (Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Hair), and Brandon J. Dirden (Tony Award–winning production of All the Way).

 

This not-to-be-missed program features commentary about Morrison’s legacy along with actor readings of “The Dancing Mind” (the speech she delivered upon her acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1996), her short story “Sweetness,” and excerpts from the novels Jazz and Sula.