This is Big! Our September 10th National Forum Will Feature an Author Interview with Tananarive Due!

Tananarive Due photo
photo credit by Melissa Hibbert

Posted in Announcements FCI-Blog JRF News

We are so excited to announce that Tananarive Due, winner of an American Book Award and an NAACP Image Award, will be joining us for an author interview at our upcoming America’s Youth Justice Story national Forum on September 10th! As fans of Due’s work, we could not be more thrilled by her participation. If you aren’t already, you will soon be hooked on her work.

Her work reflects the themes of this year’s Janet Reno Forum: using storytelling and creative expression to tell the truth about the past and the present, and in so doing catalyze change to write a new future. We hope you can join us on September 10th! Early registration is still open through August 9th!

About Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due smiling
Photo credit: Melissa Hibbert

A leading voice in Black speculative fiction, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award. Her books include The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. 

About America’s Youth Justice Story:

Titles of Sessions over red white and blue background, with torn edges of paper or earth.

“America’s Youth Justice Story: Unearthing the Past and Reimagining the Next Chapter” will be an in-person, one-day conference held in the heart of Washington, DC on Georgetown University’s Capitol Hill Campus. The Forum will explore the past, present, and future of America’s Youth Justice story through the lens of truth-telling and creative expression. 

  • We’ll be heavily featuring the work of the Forgotten Children Initiative in the first section of the Forum, with a panel facilitated by Marc Schindler that includes Erin Kimmerle, American forensic anthropologist, artist, and Executive Director of the Institute of Forensic Anthropology & Applied Science at the University of South Florida
  • The second section of the Forum will examine narratives about youth justice from policy-makers (featuring Liz Ryan and Vinny Schiraldi), communities (Ramon Ramos from The Exception), and media (Michel Martin, host of Morning Edition on NPR!). 
  • Finally, the last section will be about the future of youth justice, and feature Clinton Lacey, President and CEO of the Credible Messenger Mentoring Movement (CM3), Sonnja Brown, and amazing youth and family advocates from Youth Advocate Programs. 
  • Clinton Lacey will also be receiving the Shay Bilchik Innovation in Youth Justice Award! 

Outside of the panels, we’ll be premiering a short documentary from a filmmaker, a spotlight interview with Tananarive Due, author of the Reformatory, and hosting an art gallery displaying the work of system-impacted and justice-driven artists up in the rooftop Capitol View Convening Space.