ATLANTA, October 22, 2020 — Dr. Elizabeth West, Professor of African-American Studies / English at Georgia State University and the Director of Academics for the College of Arts and Science’s Center for Studies on Africa and its Diaspora (CSAD), moderates a panel discussion centered on the African American poetic tradition as it is rooted in the lived experience of being Black in the American South, with a particular focus on the region’s mecca, the city of Atlanta.

Panelists include Kevin Young, the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; playwright, essayist, novelist, poet and political activist Pearl Cleage; Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Georgia State University; and Dr. Maurice Hobson, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University.