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Key West Literary Seminar Celebrates Black Literature

Stuart Hall football team photo after NCS second place finish
Key West Literary Seminar Celebrates Black Literature

This was the seventh straight Key West Literary Seminar Convent & Stuart Hall has attended.

Inspired by Langston Hughes’ poem response “I, Too” to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” seven Convent & Stuart Hall faculty and administrators attended the 40th annual Key West Literary Seminar, “Singing America: A Celebration of Black Literature.”

The seminar, held from January 12–15, 2023, honored and celebrated the myriad work of Black writers, past and contemporary. Inspired by the brilliance of Phyllis Wheatley, Gwendolen Bennett, Ralph Ellison, Rita Dove, David Drake, Langston Hughes and Robert Hayden among many more, this year’s featured presenters on personal and historical narrative, storytelling, creativity and literary inspiration included:

  • Jabari Asim
  • Laura Warrell
  • Jacqueline Woodson (Visited Convent & Stuart Hall in 2014)
  • Annette Gordon-Reed (Cor Unum speaker at Convent & Stuart Hall in 2020)
  • Deesha Philyaw
  • Kellye Garrett
  • Rowan Ricardo Philiips (Cor Unum speaker at Convent & Stuart Hall in 2018)
  • Cornelius Eady
  • Megan Giddings
  • Jericho Brown
  • Victor Lavalle
  • Emily Raboteau
  • Maurice Carlos Ruffin
  • Darryl Pinckney
  • Tayari Jones

For full coverage of keynote presentations and performances at this year’s seminar, follow this link.

Photo credit: Tony Farrell