Toni Morrison (18th February 1931 - 5th August 2019) became the first Black and African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 for her novel Beloved. Her body of work centred on narrating the lives of Black people in American society, in their fullest complexities and by extension Africans in the diaspora in general. Racism, fascism, as we have seen continuously and grievously impacting Black lives, and the power of language to create or destroy, underpinned much of her non-fiction discourses. A this year marks her 90th birthday, we invite you to bring your favourite quotations, ideas, phrases, remarks, anecdotes or thoughts, along with a glass or two of your preferred calling, and some sweet hip expanding desirable to celebrate in a style becoming of the way Ms Morrison loved to make merry.

Share the link with all who'd be up for it. A camera on, recordable event.

See you there!

Organised by:

Nicole-Rachelle Moore is a Cultural Educational Consultant and coordinates the GPI's [George Padmore Institute] Events, Outreach and Publicity initiatives. Through the GPI the public can access a wide-ranging archive of rare publications relating principally to the experience of the Black community nationally and internationally from the 1960s onwards. Nicole also works with the pioneering publishers New Beacon Books and regularly consults on a range of cultural and educational issues at schools, colleges and other institutions. More recently she has served as the Co-Course Leader on the Toni Morrison and Andrea Levy Courses. In 2018 Nicole contributed as Co-Editor on Dream to Change World: The Book of the Exhibition on the life and legacy of John La Rose. She is the Founder and Co-Facilitator of Education Through Culture (ETC). Caribbean Studies and Post-Colonial Cultures are her areas of research interest.

Dr Michelle Yaa Asantewa is a writer, editor and independent scholar and facilitates a variety of workshops that are academic, creative, spiritual and cultural. Her publications include Elijah, Something Buried in the Yard, The Awakening collection of poems, a book on African derived spiritual practice: Guyanese Komfa: the ritual art of Trance and Mama Lou Tales: a folkloric biography of a Guyanese Elder were published by Way Wive Wordz Publishing, Editing and Tuition Services, which she founded in 2014. She is the Co-Course Leader on the Amazing James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Andrea Levy Courses and writes a regular blog at waywivewordzspiritualcreative which combines spiritual, social, cultural and artistic expression. Dr Asantewa is the Editor of In Search of Mami Wata: Narratives and Images of African Water Spirits, which will be published in 2020.