Zell Visiting Writers Series: Nonfiction Author Christina Sharpe Reading and Q&A

Login here (no pre-registration needed): http://tinyurl.com/ZellWriters23.

Zell Visiting Writers Series readings and Q&As are free and open to the public and will be offered both virtually (via Zoom) and in person (in UMMA’s Stern Auditorium). Seats are offered on a first come, first served basis; please arrive early to secure a spot.

Christina Sharpe is a writer, Professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class (RGC), at the University of Johannesburg.

Sharpe is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (Duke 2010) and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke 2016). In the Wake was named by the Guardian and The Walrus as one of the best books of 2016 and was a nonfiction finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Her third book Ordinary Notes was published in April 2023 by Knopf (Canada), FSG (USA), and Daunt (UK).

“The abacus of her eyelids,” her critical introduction to Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems of Dionne Brand was published in August 2022. She is currently working on three books: Black. Still. Life. (Duke 2025), What Could a Vessel Be? (FSG/Knopf 2025), and To Have Been to the End of the World: 25 Essays on Art.

For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email kimjulie@umich.edu–we are eager to help ensure this event is inclusive to you. The building, event space, and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. Diaper changing tables are available in nearby restrooms. Gender-inclusive restrooms are available on the second floor of the Museum, accessible via the stairs, or in nearby Hatcher Graduate Library (Floors 3, 4, 5, and 6). The Hatcher Library also offers a reflection room (4th Floor South Stacks), and a lactation room (Room 13W, an anteroom to the basement women’s staff restroom, or Room 108B, an anteroom of the first floor women’s restroom). ASL interpreters and CART services at in-person events are available upon request; please email kimjulie@umich.edu at least two weeks prior to the event, whenever possible, to allow time to arrange services.

U-M employees with a U-M parking permit may use the Church Street Parking Structure (525 Church St., Ann Arbor) or the Thompson Parking Structure (500 Thompson St., Ann Arbor). There is limited metered street parking on State Street and South University Avenue. The Forest Avenue Public Parking Structure (650 South Forest Ave., Ann Arbor) is five blocks away, and the parking rate is $1.20 per hour. All of these options include parking spots for individuals with disabilities.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series is a reading series presented by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art, with support from the Department of English Language & Literature, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and Janey Lack.

ZVWS events are free and open to the public. For additional information, questions, or accommodations needs, please contact Program Manager Julie Cadman-Kim at kimjulie@umich.edu.