Join us at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 21, for a special edition of Hearing Voices/Seeing Visions at Orr Street Studios. Writer and musician
Anand Prahlad will read from his memoir. Writer and musician
Cornelius Eady will perform with his trio.
THE SECRET LIFE OF A BLACK ASPIE: A MEMOIR
In 1954 a black boy is born on a plantation in rural Virginia. He inhabits a liminal inner world where sensory experiences blur together and memory is fluid. For the first four years of his life, he doesn't speak. Then he finds his voice. Slowly entering the outside world, he evolves into an artist and educator whose extraordinary literary and musical gifts emerge through unspoken neurological challenges. Anand Prahlad’s distinctly American journey takes readers from school desegregation in the South, to New Age enclaves in the West, to higher education in the Midwest, deepening our understanding of autism, race and gender along the way.
The Secret Life of a Black Aspie is the winner of the 2016 Permafrost Prize for Nonfiction.
ANAND PRAHLAD
Poet, folklorist and musician
Anand Prahlad is professor of English and director of creative writing at the University of Missouri. He is the author of the books poetry
As Good as Mango and
Hear My Story and Other Poems and the academic books
African American Proverbs in Context and
Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music as well as editor of the 2005 three-volume and the 2016 one-volume editions of the
Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore.
Prahlad's teaching awards including the Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence and the University of Missouri Faculty-Alumni Award.
THE CORNELIUS EADY TRIO
National Book Award winner and Pulitzer prize nominated poet
Cornelius Eady
has set his poetry to song with the
Cornelius Eady Trio. Eady's songs
tell the story of passing time, the black American experience and the
blues in the style of Folk & Americana music. Guitarists
Charlie Rauh
&
Lisa Liu join Eady to create layered
and graceful arrangements to bolster Eady's adept craftsmanship as a
songwriter, lyricist and poet. The Cornelius Eady Trio's debut album,
"Field Recordings," was released by
Kattywompus Press on vinyl in
February 2017.
Poet Cornelius Eady was born in 1954 and raised in Rochester, New York. He is the author of
Hardheaded Weather (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008);
Brutal
Imagination (2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award
in Poetry;
the autobiography of a jukebox (1997);
You Don’t Miss Your
Water (1995);
The Gathering of My Name (1991), which was nominated
for the Pulitzer Prize;
BOOM BOOM BOOM (1988);
Victims of the Latest
Dance Craze (1985), which was chosen for
the 1985
Lamont
Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and
Kartunes (1980).
In 1996, Eady and the poet
Toi Derricote
founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving black poets and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical
debate. In 2016, they accepted the
National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the
American Literary Community. Eady has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of
several works of musical theater, including
You Don’t Miss Your Water;
Running
Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999;
Fangs, and
Brutal
Imagination, which received
Newsday‘s Oppenheimer Award in 2002. Eady's honors include the
Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,
the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He currently holds the Miller Chair in
Poetry at the University of Missouri.
Orr
Street Studios is located at 106 Orr St. in downtown Columbia, Missouri. Join
us the third Tuesday evening of each month during the academic year for literary readings
and visual-arts presentations.
