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Reset is the official monthly newsletter of Evanston Public Library's Collection Advisory Committee of Black Evanstonians. This committee is dedicated to advising EPL on purchases, selection, displays, and all aspects of collection development. Click here to subscribe to this newsletter.
Northwestern University Alumna Angela Jackson has been named the fifth Illinois Poet Laureate, following in the footsteps of Gwendolyn Brooks. Jackson graduated from Northwestern in 1977. Northwestern University Press is Jackson's official publisher while her papers and writing are held by the Northwestern University Libraries.
Jackson's forthcoming book More Than Meat and Raiment: Poems will be released late in 2021. To read her work now, please look at It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time: Poems, her novel Roads Where There Are No Roads, and her biography of Gwendolyn Brooks A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun.
Some may know Lynn Dixon as a teacher and educator who has recently been helping children through virtual learning during a very tough time. But Lynn is also an author, with many books available at Evanston Public Library. We took some time to speak with Lynn about her life and career:
Q: Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you lived in Evanston? Have you always written?
I am an educator, and this is my 50th year teaching. I started out as a high school English teacher with Chicago Public Schools and taught at both Fenger High and Lane Tech in the 70's. I lived in Evanston for two years in the mid-70's while teaching at Lane Tech. I volunteered at the Evanston Review and received my first by-line while working under Frank Coakley at the Evanston Review. I typed dates and deadlines and obits which was a tedious task.
I moved back to Evanston in 2014 after living in the South, mid-South and New England. I find comfort in writing and journaling and now blogging. I had self-published three books before returning to Evanston in the fall of 2014. Since, I have been back, I have written and published seven books.
Q: You've a fiction series, I believe. Can you tell us a bit about it?
My fiction set of seven short novellas are about a professional couple who meet after experiencing ill-matched relationships. Their careers are at stake due to emotional upheavals, but once Tyre and Phoenix meet each other, they find more balance and their journey continues together. I wanted to show what professional blacks go through on a daily basis which is rarely shown in stories about people of color. Thus, we have A Golden Leaf in Time Revised; Warm Intrigues; A Continuum; In the Throes of Progress, Boston and Beyond; Gardens of Green and It Is Enough!
The books’ settings take place in Evanston, Old Town, the South Suburbs and on to frosty New England. Many readers will recognize some of the restaurants and hot spots that Tyre and Phoenix frequent as they grow together.
I have also put two collections of blog posts in books called Musings and More Musings and had previously written a travel memoir called Traveling Streams: A Reflective Journey.
Q: I know that you write poetry as well as prose. How does being a poet influence your novels?
Regarding poetry, I write when the spirit hits me. Sometimes, I want to relay a message and it is the quickest way to deliver my thoughts to my readers if I feel that I am pressed for time. Sometimes, I sprinkle tads of poetry into my novels to simply add a little pizzazz and flavor.
Q: What advice would you give to other authors living here in Evanston?
Being back in Evanston has afforded the space and tranquility to produce. When I look back, I cannot believe what I have accomplished since 2014. It was not done intentionally but as most creative people know, we move when we are moved.
To other writers, I would strongly suggest that you stay in the flow of life. You must live life. Though I retired as a school librarian in 2013, I have subbed in District 65 for several long -term assignments. Being around the children, the colleagues and having access to the lakefront have all kept my muses flowing.
Each year the NAACP Image Awards include a great number of nominees in their literary categories. Be sure to check out the following in our collections:
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Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction:
Black Bottom Saints Alice Randall, Lakewood Megan Giddings, Riot Baby Tochi Onyebuchi, The Awkward Black Man Walter Mosley, The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett
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Outstanding Literary Work - NonFiction:
A Black Women’s History of the United States Daina Berry, A Promised Land Barack Obama, Driving While Black Gretchen Sorin, Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America Michael Eric Dyson, We’re Better Than This Elijah Cummings
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Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author:
A Knock at Midnight Brittany Barnett, Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World Cole Brown, Lakewood Megan Giddings, The Compton Cowboys Walter Thompson-Hernandez, We’re Better Than This Elijah Cummings
And more!
Did you know that you can stream movies for free thanks to Kanopy? The library's newest streaming service is accessible through an app on your device and can even work with your television (ask one of our librarians to tell you how).
This month, Kanopy announced the newest documentary titles they'd acquired. Be sure to check out the following:
Pahokee - Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan paint a detailed and astonishing portrait of PAHOKEE, a rural village in the Everglades, Florida. Very close-knit, its inhabitants fight to face fragile financial situations and an uncertain future. Through a precise observational approach, the film captures the daily life of this city restoring a rich palette of nuances. From sporting events to beauty contests at school, the filmmakers explore social and community rituals, and how gender and identity are portrayed as new stories are created.
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The Cancer Journals Revisited - THE CANCER JOURNALS REVISITED is prompted by the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde's classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today. At the invitation of filmmaker Lana Lin, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven writers, artists, activists, health care advocates, and current and former patients recite Lorde's manifesto aloud on camera, collectively dramatizing it and producing an oration for the screen. The film is both a critical commentary and a poetic reflection upon the precarious conditions of survival within the intimate and politicized public sphere of illness.
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Pressure Cooker - Profiles the lives of three high school seniors from Northeast Philadelphia, each with unique hardships but with the shared goal of winning scholarships to the country's best culinary schools. Their unlikely hero is the irreverent culinary arts teacher, Mrs. Stephenson, whose teaching style is hilariously blunt. Mrs. Stephenson is both a surrogate mother and a culinary boot-camp instructor, as she pushes her kids to achieve beyond what anyone else expects from them.
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