• April 25, 2024
          Verselandia! Youth Poetry Slam Championship (2024)
          April 26, 2024
          BIPOC Reading Series April
          May 1, 2024
          One Page Wednesday: May
          May 16, 2024
          Slamlandia
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Ibram X. Kendi

Ibram X. Kendi

Ibram X. Kendi is a #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. His relentless and passionate research puts into question the notion of a post-racial society and opens readers’ and audiences’ eyes to the reality of racism in America today. Kendi’s lectures are sharp, informative, and hopeful, serving as a strong platform for any institution’s discussions on racism and being antiracist.

Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Begining: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and The Black Campus Movement, which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize. He is also the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers, How to Be an Antiracist, and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a young adult remix of Stamped from the Beginning, co-authored with Jason Reynolds. He most recently authored the #1 Indie bestseller, Antiracist Baby, available as a board book and picture book for caretakers and little ones. Kendi alongside the award-winning historian Dr. Keisha N. Blain edited the upcoming Four Hundred Souls (February 2021), a choral history of African Americans covering four hundred years in the voices of ninety writers.

Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News correspondent. Kendi has published numerous essays in periodicals, including The New York TimesThe Washington PostTimeThe Huffington Post, and The Root. Kendi has received research fellowships, grants, and visiting appointments from a variety of universities, foundations, professional associations, and libraries, including the American Historical Association, Library of Congress, National Academy of Education, Lyndon B. Johnson Library & Museum, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Brown University, Princeton University, Duke University, University of Chicago, and UCLA. He was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow. He will also become the 2020-2021 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for the Advanced Study at Harvard University. Kendi lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Events, Classes, and Seminars

Our events, classes, and seminars bring the community together to hear, learn, and discuss the most compelling issues and ideas of our day. We hope you will join us in our downtown Literary Arts space, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.