Let Us Descend: A Conversation With Jesmyn Ward & Ta-Nehisi Coates by The Town Hall

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TUESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2023 • 7PM THE TOWN HALL AND THE CENTER FOR FICTION PRESENT

LET US DESCEND A CONVERSATION WITH

JESMYN WARD AND TA-NEHISI COATES WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

S. EPATHA MERKERSON AND NAOMI PIERRE PERFORMANCES BY MEMBERS OF

THE HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS STRING QUARTET NO. 2 IN A MINOR: III. JUBA FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)

AT THE PURCHASER’S OPTION WITH VARIATIONS (2016) RHIANNON GIDDENS (B. 1977) ARRANGED BY JACOB GARCHIK (B. 1976) Scriptwriter Melanie McNair Book Cover Art © Jaya Miceli Let Us Descend is published by Scribner Books, October 3, 2023

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“A devastating, deeply moving masterpiece.” —Good Housekeeping

“[Ward’s] most masterful work yet... Pitting ancestral wisdom and human connection against the arbitrary brutality of slavery, this book will have readers torn between wanting to savor the richness of every sentence and needing to know, immediately, what happens next.” —Oprah Daily “Annis’s story, told in Ward’s musical prose, is nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving.” —Vogue “Imaginative... Combining magical realism with historical fiction, two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s fourth novel tells the story of Annis, an enslaved girl in the antebellum South... To survive, she must tap into the mystical in this heart-wrenching narrative of the American South in the age of slavery.” —Time “Ward’s writing is breathtaking in its brutal honesty of life among slavers and is also lyrical in the moments of imaginative escape.” —The Denver Herald “A new novel from Jesmyn Ward s always a reason for celebration… In this magical realist masterwork, Ward writes with lyric brilliance about women’s resilience in the face of heartbreaking odds.” —Esquire

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A BOUT LET US DE S CEN D “Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation. From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land— the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages. A BOUT JE S MYN WARD Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi. A BOUT TA-N EH ISI COAT ES Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning author and journalist. He is the author of the bestselling books The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship the same year. As a journalist with a career spanning over two decades, @TownHallNYC | 3

he’s written for numerous publications including The Washington City Paper, The Village Voice, The New Yorker and The New York Times. During his time reporting for The Atlantic between 2008-2018, he penned numerous articles and essays, including the National Magazine Award-winning 2012 essay Fear of a Black President and the influential June 2014 essay The Case For Reparations.

Ta-Nehisi also enjoyed a successful run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (20162021) and Captain America (2018-2021) comics series. In September 2022 he joined Howard University’s faculty as a writer-in-residence and the Sterling Brown Chair in the Department of English. AB O UT S . E PAT HA ME R K ER S ON An Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award recipient, S. Epatha Merkerson has won critical acclaim for her work in theater, film and television. She is best known for her 17 season run as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren in the original LAW AND ORDER franchise. In April 2023 she completed the 8th season of NBC’s CHICAGO MED where she plays Sharon Goodwin, a hospital administrator.

AB O UT N AO M I PI E RR E This 16 year old singer/songwriter has written over 50 songs, and has just recently starred alongside Renee Elise Goldsperry as Miranda in Shakespeare in the Park’s recent adaptation of THE TEMPEST. She is happy to be here today!!

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AB O UT HARL E M C HA MB ER P LAY E R S The Harlem Chamber Players is an ethnically diverse collective of professional musicians dedicated to bringing high caliber, affordable, accessible live music to people in the Harlem community and beyond. Founded in 2008, The Harlem Chamber Players annually presents a rich season of formal live concerts, indoors, outdoors, and online. They also promote arts inclusion and equal access to the arts, bringing live music to underserved communities and promoting shared community arts and cultural engagement. The group was first inspired by the late Janet Wolfe, a long-time patron of minority musicians and founder of the NYC Housing Symphony Orchestra. The Harlem Chamber Players have presented culturally relevant programs at numerous venues throughout the city and collaborated with many other arts organizations. The Harlem Chamber Players are also Artists-in-residence at the Harlem School of the Arts. They have been featured on national radio on WQXR as well as The Greene Space at WQXR and WNYC. The Harlem Chamber Players have also been mentioned in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Musical America, and on NPR, NBC, and Here and Now on ABC. The Harlem Chamber Players were awarded the 2022 Sam Miller Award for the Performing Arts. To learn more about Harlem Chamber Players, please visit their website (www.harlemchamberplayers.org).

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Ashley Horne, Violin A native of Los Angeles, violinist Ashley Horne has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician around the world. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he is known for his “bright tone and fine overall sense of style” (Dennis Rooney of Strad Magazine). He has performed regularly with American Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bard Festival Orchestra, Westchester Symphony, West-Park Chamber Society, Gateways Music Festival, Dance Theatre of Harlem Orchestra and New York City Opera, as well as on Broadway’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Wild Party, Carousel, The Producers, and On the Town. He has been the featured soloist and concertmaster of numerous ensembles, including The New Black Repertory Ensemble, The Antara Ensemble of NY, Cascade Festival Orchestra, and Aspen Young Artists Orchestra and has served as the music director of The Antara Ensemble. His recording of Henry Cowell’s Fiddler’s Jig with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra can be heard on Koch International. Mr. Horne has been a recitalist at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Solo and chamber music performances have taken him to many interesting parts of the globe, such as Spain, Portugal, the Azores Islands, Odessa and Istanbul. Filmgoers can see Mr. Horne in Le Mozart Noir, the PBS documentary of violinist and composer Chevalier de Saint George, as well as in Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America.

Claire Chan, Violin Claire Chan, born in Detroit, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University where she earned musical honors and a Sc.B. in Neuroscience. Changing course, she continued her studies on the violin at The Juilliard School. As a scholarship student of Joseph Fuchs, she completed both her master’s and doctoral degrees. She taught at the Juilliard School as an assistant to both Professor Fuchs and the Juilliard String Quartet and later served on the faculty in Beijing at the Central Conservatory and the Capital Normal University. Currently, she teaches at Third Street Music School Settlement and at the Chamber Music Center of New York. She performs as a member of the Harlem Chamber Players Quartet, Sweeney Todd on Broadway, and New York City Opera. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with several award-winning groups such as the Essex Quartet and the Beijing Quartet and Chamber Players. She also performed as a member of the Kneisel Trio, the Jade String Trio, and with such varied artists as Sam Smith, 50 Cent, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Tony Bennet, Hall and Oats, Andrea Bocelli and Placido Domingo. She can be heard on labels of RCA Victor, Centaur, Convivium, Annsam, ESS.A.Y, and Death of Classical.

William Frampton, Viola Violist William Frampton has been praised by critics for his “impressive” performances (The New York Times) and “a glowing amber tone” (The Boston Globe). Since his New York recital debut in 2009 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, William has enjoyed a career of performances around the world as a chamber 6 | @TownHallNYC

musician, soloist, and orchestral player. Highlights include over 100 performances with a string quartet led by Midori Goto in tours of Asia and North America, appearances as guest artist with Escher Quartet and Johannes Quartet, and world premieres of chamber music by J. Mark Stambaugh and a concerto by Peter Homans. William is Principal Viola of American Symphony Orchestra and Associate Musician with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He performs in the Broadway orchestras of Hamilton and The Lion King, and on film scores including Barbie, The Joker, West Side Story, The Greatest Showman, and The Girl on the Train. William is Artistic Director of Music at Bunker Hill, a chamber music series in Southern New Jersey he co-founded in 2008 that brings five professional chamber music performances to Gloucester County, New Jersey every year. The community built as a result of Music Bunker Hill has brought regular collaborations with schools, libraries, orchestras, and civic organizations, contributing to the cultural life of Southern New Jersey. He has performed at festivals including Bard Summerscape, Verbier, and IMS Prussia Cove, and as soloist with conductors including Joseph Silverstein and David Hoose. He holds degrees from New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School, and studied with Kim Kashkashian, Samuel Rhodes, Choong-Jin Chang, and Byrnina Socolofsky. William teaches viola and chamber music at The College of New Jersey.

Wayne Smith, Cello Wayne Smith gave his recital debut at the Kennedy Center in 1996 and has appeared as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Italy, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Poland, and China. He is a frequent performer at Bargemusic and has appeared with the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the Ritz Chamber Players, the Manhattan Chamber Players, the National Chamber Orchestra, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and the Princeton Chamber Symphony among other groups, and was a featured soloist on the PBS Series Musical Encounters. He has recorded and performed with such artists as Joe, Richard Smallwood, and the Spin Doctors’ Anthony Krizan, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and the Moody Blues. He is currently performing on Broadway in the orchestra for Sweeney Todd. He has also enjoyed an active teaching career and was on the faculties of Amherst College, the Deerfield Academy, the Williston Northampton School, and Salisbury State University. He did his undergraduate studies at the Eastman School of Music with Steven Doane and his graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with Astrid Schween.

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AB O UT T HE CO M POS ER S

Rhiannon Giddens (b. 1977) At the Purchaser’s Option With Variations (2016) Arranged by Jacob Garchik (b. 1976) Rhiannon Giddens’ At the Purchaser’s Option With Variations is an instrumental variation of a song from her album Freedom Highway (Nonesuch, 2017), arranged by Jacob Garchik. She wrote the song after finding in a book a 19th-century advertisement for a 22-year-old female slave whose 9-month-old baby was also for sale, but “at the purchaser’s option.” This piece comes from that advertisement, and from thinking about what that woman’s life might have been like. At the Purchaser’s Option With Variations (2016) was commissioned for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, a project of the Kronos Performing Arts Association. The score and parts are available for free online at kronosquartet.org.

Florence Price (1887-1953) Florence Price was the first Black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. She began learning music very early; her mother started teaching her piano before she was four years old, and she was composing by age eleven. She went on to study at the New England Conservatory, where she received two degrees within three years: the Teachers Diploma in Piano and a Soloists Diploma in Organ. By her early twenties, she was running the music department of Georgia’s Clark Atlanta University. She also won multiple awards for her compositions, including first prize in the Wanamaker Competition with her Symphony No. 1 in E minor, which led to the piece being premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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M ESSAGE F RO M T HE C EN T E R F OR F IC T ION

Dear Guests, We are honored to welcome you to this storied hall tonight to celebrate two of our greatest writers. Like The Town Hall, The Center for Fiction has a long history in New York City. We started in Manhattan in 1820 as the Mercantile Library of New York and have since expanded our mission to include a special focus on the creation and enjoyment of fiction. In 2019, we opened our new home in Brooklyn: a library, event space, independent bookstore, cafe, writers studio and more. Please visit us! We heartily thank The Town Hall for partnering with us to bring you this special event. It is a rare thing to gather in such numbers to celebrate a novel. Fiction is an art that relies on interiority. Unlike its more extroverted sisters–playwriting, screenwriting, songwriting–its effect is often life-changing, but quiet. That is why events like this one, where we meet to share in the profound impact of literature, are important. As many of you know, Jesmyn Ward and Ta-Nehisi Coates write evocative work that shows us America and teaches us about ourselves. Their work is necessary, urgent and exquisite. Thank you to S. Epatha Mekerson, Naomi Pierre, and The Harlem Chamber Players for joining in the celebration. Thank you to the staff of The Town Hall, The Center for Fiction, and Scribner for putting your heart and soul into making this happen. And thank you for taking the time to be here with us. May this evening be a gift that prepares you to receive the gift of reading Let Us Descend. Warmly, Lydah DeBin

Executive Director Melanie McNair

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AB O UT T HE C E N T E R F OR F IC T ION The Center for Fiction is a home for readers and writers based in the heart of the Brooklyn cultural district. The 18,000 sq. ft. facility offers New Yorkers an immersive cultural experience centered on a shared love of literature and storytelling in all its forms. The Center features a Bookstore, Cafe & Bar, membership library, Writers Studio, and Members Lounge & Reading Room. As the only literary nonprofit dedicated solely to the art of fiction, the organization provides public programming, reading groups, writing workshops, KidsRead/KidsWrite programs, an Emerging Writer Fellowship, and literary awards.

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1935 Marian Anderson makes her New York operatic debut

1944 Langston Hughes discusses the race question on air at “America’s Town Meeting”

1945 Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker debut Bebop in a formal concert hall

1957 Ravi Shankar performs here 9 years before he meets The Beatles

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1964 Coretta Scott King debuts her Freedom Concerts

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