N.K. Jemisin: How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?

N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story “The City Born Great,” a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.

N.K. Jemisin will be joined in conversation by Makeba Lavan. Makeba is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she focuses on (African) American Studies, Afrofuturism and Popular Culture. She has taught writing and literature courses at Lehman College since 2014.