The Author Events Series presents Elizabeth Alexander | Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales
In Conversation with Farah Jasmine Griffin
In this deeply personal book, Elizabeth Alexander gives us profound and galvanizing lessons from culture and life to move through challenging times. In close readings of visionary and beloved poets and writers–Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and June Jordan, among others–Dr. Alexander meditates on how words and values can sustain and inspire us, interweaving her voice with revelatory works of art by some of our most extraordinary visual artists, richly reproduced in the book’s pages.
Her stories of connection–as a daughter, wife, widow, and mother of two sons; reflecting at midlife on her younger days as an aspiring dancer; as a poet at President Obama’s inauguration on the dais alongside her father, a civil rights pioneer; urging radical welcome in our families, communities, and country–engage and move us. Her reflections on the public project of acknowledging historical truths, a focus of her leadership at the Mellon Foundation, model courageous action.
Throughout the book, Alexander poses questions, encouraging readers to recognize the abundant resources we carry within or can access: language, history, art, community, family, our bodies, our stories, and love itself. In luminous and powerful prose, Signals Across Vast Distances calls us to imagine possibilities, take courage, and–in Alexander’s closing words–lead with love.
Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. She composed and recited “Praise Song for the Day” for President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and is currently president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities. She lives and works in New York City.
Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University where she also served as the inaugural Chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and an Andrew Mellon Foundation Scholar in Residence. Professor Griffin received her B.A. in History & Literature from Harvard and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. She is the author or editor of eight books Additionally, Griffin collaborated with composer, pianist, Geri Allen and director, actor S. Epatha Merkerson on two theatrical projects, for which she wrote the book: The first, “Geri Allen and Friends Celebrate the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo,” with Lizz Wright, Dianne Reeves, Teri Lyne Carrington and others, premiered on the main stage of the Apollo Theater in May of 2013. The second, “A Conversation with Mary Lou” featuring vocalist Carmen Lundy, premiered at Harlem Stage in March 2014 and was performed at The John F. Kennedy Center in May of 2016. She lives in New York.
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