A Conversation About Race with Claudia Rankine and Sarah Blake

Join Horizons at Foote

With acclaimed authors and friends Claudia Rankine and Sarah Blake (Foote ‘75) Moderated by Roxanne Coady (Foote Parent ‘05) of RJ Julia Booksellers

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

7:00-8:00 PM ET, Via Zoom

Tickets are $100

100% of each ticket benefits Horizons at Foote

All registered attendees have the option to purchase (add-on) at checkout and receive signed copies of “Just Us” and “The Guest Book” for a discounted price of $30.

Please register by March 29 to receive your books before the event.

Horizons at Foote is an academic and enrichment program creating opportunities for New Haven Public School students from underserved communities.

Learn more about Horizons at Foote at www.horizonsatfoote.org

Questions? Email kmaull@footeschool.org

Claudia Rankine is the author of five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019; as well as numerous video collaborations. Her recent collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine will join the NYU Creative Writing Program in Fall 2021. She lives in New Haven, CT.

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Sarah Blake learned how to read and write and think in large part because of her great English and History teachers at Foote: Bill Friday, Virginia Wilkinson, and Bob Sandine. She is the author of Full Turn, a book of poems, and three novels: Grange House and the NYTimes bestsellers, The Postmistress and The Guest Book.

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Roxanne Coady founded R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut in 1989, creating a business that is recognized as a national leader among independent booksellers. R.J. Julia also manages BookHampton in East Hampton, NY and Wesleyan RJ Julia in Middletown, CT. In 2009, Ms. Coady founded a personalized book subscription site, Just the Right Book. This site has a national reach and combines the intimacy of an independent bookstore with the digital marketplace, i.e. human algorithm. In addition, Ms. Coady hosts a weekly podcast, Just the Right Book, in which she talks to the very best contemporary nonfiction authors. Ms. Coady is the founder and Board Emeritus of Read to Grow, the largest literacy program in Connecticut. Since 1996, Read to Grow has donated more than 2 million children’s books. She currently serves as a board member of the Connecticut Council on Education Reform, the New Haven Innovation Collaborative and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.