Chicago Humanities Fall Festival - Jesmyn Ward: Let Us Descend

Jesmyn Ward: Let Us Descend
A resilient journey of enslavement

Acclaimed author Jesmyn Ward is a MacArthur Genius Grant winner and the first woman and Black American to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice. Join moderator Natalie Moore for an evening with this literary powerhouse as she dives into her latest novel, Let Us Descend. Set in the antebellum South during the early 1800s, the story describes a haunting journey of a young slave girl from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans. Landing on Oprah’s Book Club and several best book of 2023 lists, Ward’s lyrical prose and unflinching narrative confront the brutal realities of enslavement. Join a rigorous discussion on Ward's contribution to the African American literary canon.

Jesmyn Ward:

Jesmyn Ward is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, which won the National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the National Book Award, as well as the memoir Men We Reaped, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also edited the anthology The Fire This Time. In 2016, she received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a MacArthur Fellow. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University.

Natalie Moore:
Reporter, Race, Class and Communities

Natalie Moore covers segregation and inequality. Her enterprise reporting has tackled race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s work has been broadcast on the BBC, Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition.

Natalie is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and a Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation. Natalie writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her work has been published in Essence, Ebony, the Chicago Reporter, *****, In These Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. She is the 2017 recipient of Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award. In 2010, she received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award for reporting on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. In 2009, she was a fellow at Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, which allowed her to take a reporting trip to Libya.

Natalie has won several journalism awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Other honors are from the Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Association of Black Journalists, Illinois Associated Press and Chicago Headline Club. The Chicago Reader named her best journalist in 2017. In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from Adler University. In These Times gave her the 2017 Voice of Progressive Journalism Award. Natalie frequently collaborates with Chicago artist Amanda Williams. She is a 2021 USA Fellow. The Pulitzer Center named her a 2020 Richard C. Longworth Media Fellow for international reporting. In 2021, University of Chicago Center for Effective Government (CEG), based at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, welcomed her its first cohort of Senior Practitioner Fellows. Prior to joining WBEZ staff in 2007, Natalie was a city hall reporter for the Detroit News. She has also been an education reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a reporter for the Associated Press in Jerusalem.

Natalie has an M.S.J. in Newspaper Management from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Journalism from Howard University. She has taught at Columbia College and Medill. Natalie and her husband Rodney live in Hyde Park with their four daughters.

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