Krista Franklin and Nate Marshall - "Too Much Midnight" and "FINNA" - Virtual Event

Krista Franklin and Nate Marshall will discuss Too Much Midnight and FINNA. They will be joined in conversation by Parneshia Jones.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival

Virtual event

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About the books: In Too Much Midnight, Krista Franklin draws on Pan African histories, Black Surrealism, Afrofuturism, pop culture, art history, and the historical and present-day micro-to-macro violence inflicted upon Black people and other people of color, working to forge imaginative spaces for radical possibilities and visions of liberation. Featuring 30 poems, 30 artworks, an author statement and an interview, Too Much Midnight chronicles the intersections between art and life, art and writing, the historical and the speculative, cultural and personal identity, the magical and the mundane.

The poems in FINNA consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives and other oppressed people in our current era of emboldened white supremacy, and the use of the Black vernacular in America’s vast reserve of racial and gendered epithets. FINNA explores the erasure of peoples in the American narrative; asks how gendered language can provoke violence; and finally, how the Black vernacular expands our notions of possibility, giving us a new language of hope.

About the authors: Krista Franklin is a writer and visual artist, the author of Too Much Midnight, the artist book Under the Knife, and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has exhibited at Poetry Foundation, Konsthall C, Rootwork Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, and the set of 20th Century Fox’s Empire. She has been published in Poetry, Black Camera, The Offing, Vinyl, and a number of anthologies and artist books. She currently teaches Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Nate Marshall is a rapper, writer, and educator from the South Side of Chicago. He is the author of Wild Hundreds, winner of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award, among others. He is co-author with Eve L. Ewing of No Blues Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks and editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Marshall’s latest book is FINNA. In 2015 Marshall and his musical group Daily Lyrical Product released their rap album Grown. He is the Director of National Programs for Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Festival and assistant professor at Colorado College.

About the interlocutor: Parneshia Jones is the author of Vessel: Poems, winner of the Midwest Book Award. Jones has been honored with the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Margaret Walker Short Story Award, and the Aquarius Press Legacy Award. Named one of the “25 Writers to Watch” by the Guild Complex and one of “Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago” by Newcity Magazine, her work has been anthologized and featured on PBS Newshour, the Academy of American Poets, and espnW. A member of the Affrilachian Poets, she serves as president of the Cave Canem Foundation. She currently holds positions as Sales and Community Outreach Manager and Poetry Editor for TriQuarterly Books at Northwestern University Press.