Events Calendar

Join publisher, A Public Space, for a virtual discussion of Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson with Lan Samantha Chang on Monday, February 22. Register, and submit questions, here.

Event Details
Monday, February 22, 2021
6:30 p.m. CST
Online on Zoom
This event is free and open to all. Registration is required, and you can register here. Please feel free to submit questions to Lan Samantha Chang for discussion when registering. Details for accessing the online event will be sent via email after registration. Please note a free Zoom account is required to access the event.
 

During the summer months of 1967, James Alan McPherson, studying for a law degree at Harvard and working as a janitor, started to write short stories, which would be published the next year in his first collection, Hue and Cry. "What comes through with each page is an empathetic understanding coupled with a writer’s knowledge that when dealing with human beings there are no right or wrong answers," Edward P. Jones wrote in the preface to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of the book.

James Alan McPherson (1943–2016) was the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was among the first group of artists who received a MacArthur Fellowship. At the time of his death, he was a professor emeritus of fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In addition to Hue and Cry, his books include A Region Not Home, Crabcakes, and Elbow Room.

Lan Samantha Chang is the author of four books, including the novel The Family Chao, which will be published next year. She is the Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts at the University of Iowa and the Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.