Join award-winning writer and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow John Edgar Wideman and New York Times Bestselling author and distinguished professor of African American Studies Eddie Glaude for a reading of, and conversation about, Wideman’s groundbreaking new book, Slaveroad.

John Edgar Wideman, “one of America’s premier writers of fiction” (The New York Times), has been breaking barriers in American literature for decades. In sweeping historical fiction, searching memoir, and powerfully innovative sports writing, Wideman’s unforgettable, inimitable prose pushes our national conceptions of race and American identity into new terrain.

Unsettling the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction, Slaveroad follows the shattering passage across the Atlantic Ocean to the present as Wideman conjures and reimagines historical figures whose lives were altered and upended by the long legacy of slavery — from the wife of an adulterous white Christian missionary working in Africa to Wideman’s own brother, traveling from Pittsburgh to New York after 44 years in prison. One of the most anticipated books of the year, it is a culminating work of Wideman’s long and wide-ranging career.

In a reading and candid conversation, hear this unparalleled technician of American myth, history, and language share his fascinating new work.