Celebrating 100 Years of Alain Locke's The New Negro

In celebration of the National Year of Reading, and to mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of Alain Locke’s The New Negro, St John’s College is proud to host a two-part event in celebration of Black American literature and the political change that it has, and continues, to inspire. The New Negro, published in December 1925 by Locke, the first African American to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship, featured fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen, setting the tone for a century of global radical Black thought, art, and activism.

Join us for the below programming:

Sunday 17 May, 12pm, New Seminar Room: Generative Creative Writing Workshop

This workshop is intended for writers of all levels working across genre and form. It will provide an intimate space for Oxford students to discuss, draft, and share new works to advance the contemporary and intertwined freedom struggles of Black people across the global diaspora. This in-person workshop will be facilitated by Henry Hicks IV, an American writer, organizer, and historian whose work has been featured in The Guardian, Teen Vogue, The Nation, The Drift, and In These Times, among others.

As space is limited, registration is required.

Sunday 17 May, 5-7pm, New Seminar Room: Literary Salon and Public Reading

Attendees will convene over hors d'oeuvres and light refreshments, hear from Oxford-based writers, and be encouraged to consider their role—and the role of their writing—in achieving liberation from Harlem to the African continent.

As space is limited, registration is required.

Please reach out to Klarke Stricken at klarke.stricklen@history.ox.ac.uk or Henry Hicks IV henry.hicks@history.ox.ac.uk with any questions.