NEA Big Read 2022

NEA Big Read: A Celebration of Toni Morrison's Beloved with Jacqueline Woodson, Crystal Dickinson, and Ty Jones

Tuesday, 7:00 pm EDT May 3, 2022

The Center for Fiction*
& Online via Zoom

Join us for an event celebrating Toni Morrison’s landmark masterpiece, Beloved! Jacqueline Woodson hosts the evening with dramatic readings from the novel by accomplished stage and screen actors Crystal Dickinson and Ty Jones, with special musical guest Roen Emersyn Jones. This event kicks off our partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read of Beloved. Pick up a copy if you don’t have one and help us gather a community of readers and re-readers of this timeless and essential novel. This event, along with all of our NEA BigRead programming, is free, but space is limited. Reserve your seat now.

The National Endowment for the Arts Big Read—a partnership with Arts Midwest—broadens our understanding of our world, our neighbors, and ourselves through the power of a shared reading experience. Showcasing a diverse range of themes, voices, and perspectives, the NEA Big Read aims to inspire meaningful conversations, artistic responses, and new discoveries and connections in each community.

*Proof of vaccination is required to attend this event in person. Mask wearing is also required throughout the building. Accepted vaccination proofs include:

CDC vaccination card (or an image of it)
Excelsior Pass or Excelsior Pass Plus (or a printout of it)
A record of vaccination from the healthcare provider who administered your vaccine

Anyone 5 and older is required to show proof of two vaccine doses or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Anyone 18 and older must also present a government issued photo ID.

If you remain unvaccinated because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, please contact us at [email protected] for assistance or to request a reasonable accommodation.

Featuring

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, which also received the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me; The Other Side; Each Kindness; Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.
Crystal Dickinson

Crystal Dickinson

Crystal Dickinson’s Broadway credits include the Tony Award-winning play, Clybourne Park, and Tony-nominated play, You Can’t Take It with You. She has performed off-Broadway at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, Signature Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and The Atlantic. Her film & TV credits include I Origins, The Good Wife, Feed the Beast, New Amsterdam, and recurring roles on the Showtime drama, The CHI and ABC’s, For Life.
Ty Jones

Ty Jones

NAACP Award Winner, Ty Jones is the OBIE Award Winning Producing Artistic Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH). Under Jones’ leadership, CTH’s template of financial discipline, precision marketing, and exceptional programming, resulted in its growth and stability. Jones initiated Uptown Meets Downtown, a program comprising strategic partnerships with downtown theatres designed to share expenses and build artistic bridges between communities. He created Uptown Shakespeare in the Park, bringing free, professional theatre to Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park. Jones is a vet of five Broadway shows including Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington. Principal TV/film work includes, When They See Us, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and he’s best known as Agent Donovan on Power. Graduate and Honorary Doctorate of the University of Delaware.
Roen Emersyn Jones

Roen Emersyn Jones

Roen Emersyn Jones is a 13 yr old violinist who attends the Special Music School. She is a 7th grader who also plays the Viola and loves math.

Featured Book

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Beloved

By Toni Morrison

Published by Knopf Doubleday

PURCHASE

An unflinching look into the abyss of slavery from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. This spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

About this series

NEA Big Read 2022

The Center for Fiction’s 2022 Big Read initiative focuses on Beloved, the landmark novel by the late, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. Our free multidisciplinary public programming includes discussion groups, workshops for young writers, and public events with authors and scholars. The Center will also connect with students through our signature KidsRead / KidsWrite programming, bringing events to NYC public schools that adapt discussions of Beloved for a high school audience and feature books suitable for younger readers that engage with similar themes. Through this communal celebration of a novel that has been frequently banned and censored, we hope to help return a masterful novelist’s canonical work to its rightful place of prominence. This initiative was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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