The Center for Fiction and WORDTheatre Present a Tribute to the Work of Randall Kenan

Thursday, 7:00 pm EDT September 8, 2022

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

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Featuring a WORDTheatre® performance with actors CG (Queer as Folk), Marinda Anderson (A League of Their Own), Michael Boatman (The Good Fight), and Ryan Jamaal Swain (Pose).

Post-performance discussion led by A.M. Homes and Elias Rodriques.

In-person tickets include a $10 bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.

In 2020, we lost beloved, award-winning writer and scholar Randall Kenan, master of both nonfiction and fiction and curator of James Baldwin’s unpublished works. Southern, Black, and gay, much of Kenan’s fiction centered on place, a fictional town in North Carolina similar to the one where he was raised. His nonfiction displays his warmth, intellect, and insight, and is collected in a new volume, Black Folk Could Fly. About the book, poet Terrance Hayes says:

“Almost everything in the inimitable sound of Randall Kenan’s baritone voice is contained in this collection of beautiful thinking and feeling. The warm, mercurial intelligence of Kenan’s smile, especially, is made word in this collection of beautiful thinking and feeling, thank goodness.”

In a WORDTheatre® performance that weaves together excerpts from this stunning new collection of essays, actors CG (Queer as Folk), Marinda Anderson (A League of Their Own), Michael Boatman (The Good Fight), and Ryan Jamaal Swain (Pose) will bring Kenan’s language to life, followed by a discussion with Kenan’s longtime friend A.M. Homes and author Elias Rodriques. Afterward, join us in raising a glass to his legacy. Created, directed, and produced by Cedering Fox, Founder and Artistic Director of WORDTheatre, with the assistance of Jason Goodman.

WORDTheatre®

WORDTheatre®

WORDTheatre® is on a mission to connect people by bringing to life the world’s finest contemporary literature. Featuring esteemed authors and actors, this non-profit organization has been presenting engaging and entertaining performances of short stories, poetry, novel excerpts/adaptations, and original themed literary collages for diverse audiences, from cultural enthusiasts to students in under-resourced schools, for nearly twenty years. Los Angeles based Artistic Director, Cedering Fox, and WordTheatreUK Creative Partner, Kirsty Peart, enjoy every opportunity to create their signature events, presenting them live, in-person and online for world-wide audiences, often in partnership with other literary and charitable organizations. The WORDTheatre Short Story Podcast features a world-class short story from their extraordinary archive free to the public each week. Stories are shared with students through WITS, their WORDTheatre in the Schools Program. To hear more about in-person events in LA, NY and London and to become a Member, please visit wordtheatre.org.
CG

CG

CG is known for their role as Shar on Peacock’s Queer as Folk (2022). They hold an MFA in Theater from Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Marinda Anderson

Marinda Anderson

Graduated with an MFA from NYU Graduate Acting Program, Marinda Anderson is an actress and writer most known for her role as Leah in Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own (2022) and Dr. Valarie Jessup in NBC’s New Amsterdam (2018).
Michael Boatman

Michael Boatman

Michael Boatman is from Chicago and studied acting at Western Illinois University. He is an actor and writer most known for his role as Julius Cain in CBS’s The Good Fight (2017) and as FBI Director Keith Doherty in CBS’s Madam Secretary (2016).
Ryan Jamaal Swain

Ryan Jamaal Swain

From Birmingham, Alabama and a Howard University graduate, Ryan Jamaal Swain is an actor and dancer most known for his role as Damon Richards, a homeless gay dancer, in the FX television series Pose (2018).
Randall Kenan

Randall Kenan

The last work of fiction by Randall Kenan (1963–2020), If I Had Two Wings, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Aspen Prize, and the National Book Award for Fiction (longlist). Norton published his book Black Folk Could Fly posthumously in August 2022. He was a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Elias Rodriques

Elias Rodriques

Elias Rodriques was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and split his young years between Jamaica, New York, and North Florida. He attended Stanford University and then received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His essays have been published in venues like the Guardian and the Nation, and his first novel is All the Water I’ve Seen is Running. He is an assistant editor at n+1 and an Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Sarah Lawrence.

Featured Book

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Black Folk Could Fly

By Randall Kenan

Published by W. W. Norton

PURCHASE

Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays, published as introductions to anthologies and in small journals, revealing countless facets of Kenan’s life and work.

Flying under the radar, these writings were his most personal and autobiographical: memories of the three women who raised him—a grandmother, a schoolteacher great-aunt, and the great-aunt’s best friend; recollections of his boyhood fear of snakes and his rapturous discoveries in books; sensual evocations of the land, seasons, and crops—the labor of tobacco picking and hog killing—of the eastern North Carolina lowlands where he grew up; and the food (oh the deliriously delectable Southern foods!) that sustained him. Here too is his intellectual coming of age; his passionate appreciations of kindred spirits as far-flung as Eartha Kitt, Gordon Parks, Ingmar Bergman, and James Baldwin. This powerful collection is a testament to a great mind, a great soul, and a great writer from whom readers will always wish to have more to read.