Una To Host Bestselling Writer, Pulitzer Prize Winner Isabel Wilkerson For 2011 Writer's Series

Dec. 08, 2010

Michelle Eubanks, UNA, at media@una.edu, 256.765.4392 or 256.606.2033

FLORENCE, Ala. - 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of the 2010 New York Times bestseller "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration," Isabel Wilkerson will join the 2011 Writer's Series April 14 at 12:30 p.m. in the Guillot University Performance Center. Wilkerson, who currently works as a journalism professor and director of narrative nonfiction at Boston University, was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing as the Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. She has lectured at Harvard University and worked as a professor of journalism at Princeton and Emory universities. Pam Kingsbury, instructor of English and Writer's Series organizer, said the Writer's Series committee chose Wilkerson in early October after English professor Dr. Lisa Minor recommended the author. Minor's sister, Sherri Graves Smith, of Tuscumbia, participates in a book club with Wilkerson and has developed a friendship with her over the last seven years. According to Smith, Wilkerson's book "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration," was written over the course of 15 years. The book, which was released in September 2010 and has been named "the best history book of the year" by Amazon, features a sharecropper's wife, a laborer and a surgeon who fled the South during the Great Migration, when more than 6 million African Americans migrated from the South to the North and West from 1915 to 1970. "What I admire the most about Isabel is that she cares so much about the book, because it's such an important part of American history," Smith said. "When I was started reading it, I was swept away. The book really provides a lot of knowledge about American history, as there haven't really been many other books with research at this depth." Wilkerson's work was praised as a top 10 book of 2010 by the "Library Journal," "Publisher's Weekly," and "O, The Oprah Magazine." As a correspondent for "Essence Magazine," Wilkerson campaigned with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, interviewed actor Denzel Washington and spoke with retired basketball player Magic Johnson and his wife, Cookie, after he announced being HIV positive in 1991. Pulitzer Prize winning poet and 2008 UNA Writer's Series headliner Natasha Trethewey refers to Wilkerson as a "Southerner once removed." Kingsbury said Wilkerson's parents were participants in the great African American migration from the South. Inspired by her parent's story, she completed about 1,200 interviews before publishing the book. "Those who come hear her speak will have a chance to hear someone talk about a part of history that is often ignored," Kingsbury said. "You get to hear one writer's family stories and how she linked them to a major movement in American history." The Writer's Series, which is in its 28th consecutive year at UNA, will be a free event for the UNA student body, faculty, community and area schools. A book signing and reception with Wilkerson will follow in the GUC Loft at 2 p.m. For more information about the event, contact Pam Kingsbury at 256-765-4890 or the English Department at 256-765-4238.

About The University of North Alabama

The University of North Alabama is an accredited, comprehensive regional state university offering undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs through the colleges of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering; the Sanders College of Business and Technology; Education and Human Sciences; and the Anderson College of Nursing and Health Professions. Occupying a 130-acre campus in a residential section of Florence, Alabama, UNA is located within a four-city area that also includes Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. UNA Athletics, a renowned collegiate athletics program with seven (7) Division II National Championships, is now a proud member of NCAA Division I as part of the Atlantic Sun and United Athletic conferences. The University of North Alabama is an equal opportunity institution and does not discriminate in the admission policy on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, disability, age, or national origin. For more: una.edu and una.edu/unaworks/.