Community members are invited to meet author and Grants Pass native, James Basker, for a book talk and Q&A surrounding his Library of America book, Black Writers of the Founding Era from 3–4:30 pm on Sunday, December 8 at the Grants Pass branch of Josephine Community Library, 200 NW C Street.
Featuring more than 120 writers, this anthology reveals the Black experience in the turbulent decades of the American Revolution and shines a spotlight on both enslaved and free individuals—men and women, loyalists and patriots, Northerners and Southerners.
This anthology includes contributions from soldiers, sailors, and veterans; painters, poets, and preachers; as well as cooks, farmers, and artisans. Renowned works, such as Phillis Wheatley’s powerful poetry and Benjamin Banneker’s ingenious scientific puzzles, stand alongside dozens of newly unearthed first-person narratives and previously unpublished letters and diaries.
Black Writers of the Founding Era can be placed on hold for checkout at the library in various formats.
James G. Basker is president and CEO of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a proud graduate of Grants Pass High School. As president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute since 1997, Basker has overseen the development of major history education initiatives, including a national network of affiliate schools, teacher seminars, traveling exhibitions, digital archives, the Hamilton Education Program, and the National History Teacher of the Year Award. Basker was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He serves on the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Board of Marymount School, and the Board of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars.
For more information about library programs and services, email info@josephinelibrary.org or call 541-476-0571.