CELEBRATING AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE - DAY 1

Penn State's conference on the African American Novel after 1988 kicked off the evening of October 22 (a date of some significance for this blog) with a reading and book launch by Alice Randall. Randall, perhaps best known for her controversial first novel, Wind Done Gone, presented her newly published volume, Rebel Yell.

Folks looking for continuity here may take note of the fact that Randall attended Georgetown Day School as a child with classmate Elizabeth Alexander, whose reading we featured earlier in the year.

Randall's reading was introduced by fiction writer Charlotte Holmes. It was only later that I learned, from Randall, that our colleague Lovalerie King had been among that select group of first readers who offered comments on the manuscript of the new book.