Real Talk on Life, Loss, Longing and Belonging

Michelle Miller is an Emmy, Gracie, DuPont, and Murrow award-winning journalist who co-hosts CBS Saturday Morning. Her work is also regularly featured on CBS This Morning, CBS Sunday Morning and CBS Evening News, and she has appeared as a correspondent on 48 Hours.

Miller’s New York Times bestselling biography, Belonging: A Daughter’s Search for Identity Through Loss and Love is a candid memoir of her search for the Chicana mother who deserted her at birth and her subsequent struggle to make sense of who she was and was meant to be. This lifelong quest would shape her voice as a Black woman in white newsrooms. Her complicated family story and her racial identity resonates with the nation’s ongoing, imperfect racial reckoning.

Carolyn “Cookie” Minick Mason is a media host, philanthropist, and activist. Her mission is to provide children with access to arts education and culture. As a board member of the Apollo Theater Foundation & co-chair of the Nominating & Development committee, she works to honor the influence of African American artists and advance creative voices. 

View Event Photos Here

Brothers Seth Abramson and Todd Abramson will discuss their life's work in these genres. They will also talk about helping to launch the careers of many well known artists.

Seth Abramson, Grammy Award-winning producer, is the President and founder of Rabbit Moon Productions, Inc. a full-service, live music presentation and production company. He has recently been appointed Director of Jazz Awards for The Gilmore, where he also advises on jazz artist programming.

He was founding Artistic Director for Jazz Standard, produced the 2008 New York City visit of Pope Benedict XVI, served as the Artistic Director and Music Producer for The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party’s music stage, and produced an ongoing concert series in Madison Square Park.

Seth has programmed and produced thousands of concerts and musical events, and has helped launch the careers of award-winning artists. He received his first Grammy Award in 2012.

Todd Abramson has been booking concerts since the mid-80s. His career began at the legendary Greenwich Village club Folk City. He began booking Maxwell's in 1986 and was involved in the Hoboken institution until it closed in 2013. Todd is the head talent buyer for White Eagle Hall  in Jersey City, and has promoted shows in many other venues. For over eight years, he has hosted a  weekly Saturday afternoon radio show on WFMU as "Todd-O-Phonic Todd". 

View Event Photos Here

Eliza Minot is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Tiny One and The Brambles, published by Knopf/Vintage. Knopf will publish her third novel, In The Orchard, on the day of the program.

Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies, and her books have been named to various lists, including The New York Times Notable, Booksense 76, Nancy Pearl's, and Oprah's Top Ten Summer Picks. She went to Barnard College (’91) and received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark, where she was a Presidential Fellow, in 2017. She has taught at Rutgers-Newark, Barnard College, and NYU. She is a recipient of a New Jersey State Artist Fellowship and was on the shortlist for the £20,000 Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize.

She grew up the youngest of seven children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her family.

Eliza will be in conversation with Susan Minot, award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, playwright and screenwriter. She is the author of the novels Monkeys and Evening, and wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. She currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Stony Brook University.

View Event Photos Here

From Brown v. Board to Roe v. Wade, from free speech to criminal justice to immigrants’ rights, from interracial marriage to same-sex marriage, there is no question that the ACLU has had an enormous impact on American society over the last 103 years of its existence. 

This discussion will survey the history of the ACLU, its successes, and the impact the ACLU of New Jersey has made in communities like Maplewood, across the state, and the country. The panel will also explore critical issues including access to reproductive freedom for all, policing and bias, decarceration, racial justice, voting rights, and the power of advocacy. Importantly, the panel will also discuss the evolution of the ACLU itself, including the challenges and opportunities the organization has faced and continues to face, and the ways in which it is called upon to meet the moment in the most crucial times.

Amol Sinha  is the Executive Director of the ACLU of New Jersey. Under his leadership, the ACLU-NJ has continued to change New Jersey’s social justice landscape for the better. He leads with the goal of advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in every aspect of his role, from internal capacity-building to external advocacy.

Alexander Shalom is Senior Supervising Attorney and Director of Supreme Court Advocacy at the ACLU-NJ. Alex primarily litigates cases on issues that disproportionately impact people of color. 

Maplewoodian Rhea Beck is the Director of People and Culture, a role that guides the ACLU-NJ in upholding the principles of social justice and equity not just externally, but within the organization. 

Maplewoodian Alexis Karteron is a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School. She directs the Rutgers Constitutional Rights Clinic, which handles cases and matters addressing a range of civil rights issues within the criminal legal system.

Robert Marchman is the Senior Policy Advisor on Diversity and Inclusion at the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission. He helps to promote diversity and inclusions within the SEC and twith agency partners and market participants..

View Event Photos Here

Celebrate the joy and artistry of the American art form of rhythm tap dancing! A fun-filled presentation with stories, history, performances, and a chance for the audience to dance along.

Artistic Director Deborah Mitchell, and the extraordinary dynamic artists of the award winning New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble, will share the history, impact and joy of rhythm tap dancing with a fun-filled presentation that will have your feet tapping!  Don’t miss dance numbers perfected by the masters of tap dancing, the artists’ personal journeys with the art form, and your chance to tap with them. 

An added treat of the day is an exhibit of Silent Taps, stunning black and white photographs of NJTAP artists at work by photographer and collaborator Vibecke Dahle.  Silent Taps photography takes you behind the scenes seeing the work that enables you to hear the magic. 

View Event Photos Here

The 2023 Carol Buchanan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Civic and Intellectual Life will be presented to Audrey Rowe and Nancy Gagnier, for their work with the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race.

Audrey Rowe is Program Director for the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race, where she has worked for over twenty years to make racial integration, equity and inclusion a reality for Maplewood, South Orange and beyond. She has developed unique programs, has organized the Coalition’s Conversations on Race signature event; has conducted training on unconscious bias facilitating discussions about race; and has represented the Coalition on radio and TV.

Ms. Rowe lives in Maplewood with her husband, Abdul Alim Mubarak (Ronald) Rowe. They have two adult daughters, Solana Rowe (SZA) and Panya Rowe.

Nancy Gagnier has been the Executive Director of the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race since 2008. Nancy develops pro-integrative strategies that help to build a community that is supportive of racial equity and inclusion. She has designed anti-racism trainings and has  led research to  inform areas of challenge and success in integration. Nancy is passionate about developing a racial equity ethos among residents and within institutions for the benefit of all.

Ms. Gagnier brings professional and academic writing, non-profit development, public relations, and teaching experience to her role. She has served on volunteer boards and strategic planning initiatives, and served on the South Orange/Maplewood School Board, where she focused on policy development. 

Dr. Katherine McCaffrey is President of the Maplewood Memorial Library Board of Trustees and Professor of Anthropology at Montclair State University where she teaches classes on Latin America, the Twentieth Century, Refugees, and Building Sustainable Communities. Kate is honored to have served on the Library Board for ten years with Carol Buchanan who taught her the importance of infusing community building efforts with warmth and joy.

View Event Pictures Here

A talk with Matthew Galkin and Razelle Benally, the directors of Murder in Big Horn, and its editor David Mehlman, with acclaimed film editor Tim Squyres.

Directors Razelle Benally and Matthew Galkin craft a powerful portrait of tribal members and their communities within Big Horn County, Montana battling an epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women that has been prevalent since colonization. 

Matthew Galkin is the founder of Fairhaven Films, which produced the docuseries Murder in the Bayou, Murder in Big Horn, and Empires of New York. Galkin has directed three documentary films, and is currently in production on a film for HBO.

Razelle Benally
Oglala Lakota/Diné film director and screenwriter Razelle Benally is in her thesis year of MFA candidacy of Film Production at Tisch School of the Arts. Murder in Big Horn is her most recent project. Her directorial narrative feature debut Winter in Black Mesa is in the works.

Maplewoodian David Mehlman is a documentary film and television editor. The films he’s worked on have won two Oscars, a SXSW Jury prize, a Cinema Eye Award and audience awards. He edited Murder in Big Horn.

Maplewoodian Tim Squyres has edited 26 feature films, including thirteen for director Ang Lee. His editing work has received two Oscar nominations.. He has also edited a wide variety of television and music video projects and documentaries.

View Event Photos Here

Meet the Broadway star and author of the Fearless books for middle grade readers. Children & teens will have a chance to win a copy of her latest book, Boulevard of Dreams.

Mandy Gonzalez is currently starring as Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton on Broadway.  She appeared on Madam Secretary, and originated the role of Nina Rosario in the Tony Award-winning show, In the Heights.  Mandy’s album, Fearless, was #13 on the iTunes pop charts. She is the author of Fearless and Boulevard of Dreams (co-authored with Brittany Thurman), and the founder of #FearlessSquad -- a social media movement for inclusiveness and belonging.

Ibi Zoboi Ibi Zoboi is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. She will be presented with the Maplewood Literary Award.

Ibi holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. As an educator, she is the recipient of several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti.

She’s worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools.

She is also the co-author of the Walter Award-winning Punching the Air, with prison reform activist, Dr. Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five, and editor of Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America. Her debut picture book, The People Remember, received a Coretta Scott King Book Honor Award.

Her most recent books are Star Child: a Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler, and Okoye to the People: a Black Panther Novel, for Marvel.

Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and currently lives in Maplewood with her husband and three children.

Copies of her books will be available for sale and signing.

Maplewoodian Nancy Solomon is a Senior Reporter for WNYC and founding editor of New Jersey Public Radio, which won a 2014 Peabody Award for Chris Christie, White House Ambitions and the Abuse of Power.

She will be receiving the Carol Buchanan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Civic and Intellectual Life. 

Solomon fell in love with radio reporting and production at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, in 1995. She moved to New Jersey in 2001 and has been covering the state ever since. She has produced more than a hundred stories for NPR and was a 2008-09 Spencer Fellow in Education Reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. During that year, Solomon produced “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students” for which she won a Peabody Award. Long before becoming a journalist, Solomon was the first woman ever hired to work on the county road crew in Portland, Oregon.

Nancy will be in conversation with Deborah Goldstein. Deborah Goldstein is a producer for The Takeaway, a podcast and national public radio show focusing on the American conversation. She is also the executive producer and host of the Gen-Z Media game show podcast, The Big Fib. Deborah lives in South Orange with her lady-spouse and 2 man-children.

Silicon Valley and the Future of Innovation

Over the last decade, Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" innovation ethos has come under increasing fire as the broader social impact of companies like Facebook and Amazon have become more widely debated. How can and should technological innovation look as we enter the 2020s? This session will explore the past and present of innovation. In doing so, we'll explore the concept of "innovation" itself, and how it came to play such a central role in debates about the economy and technology.

Tim Hwang is a writer and researcher, currently the general counsel at Substack. He  lives in Maplewood, and is the author of Subprime Attention Crisis, a book about the online advertising bubble. He’s a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, is on the board of the tech nonprofit Meedan, and is an investor in Temescal Brewing.

Hwang will be in conversation with Jon Gertner, fellow Maplewoodian and author of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation and The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future. Gertner is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post.

Maplewood resident Christina Swarns is the Executive Director of the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate and equitable systems of justice for everyone. The Innocence Project’s work is guided by science and grounded in antiracism.

Christina previously served as the President and Attorney-in-Charge of the Office of the Appellate Defender, Inc. and as the Litigation Director for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. and Director of their Criminal Justice Project. 

She began her legal career as a Staff Attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division in New York, and served as a Supervising Assistant Federal Defender and Assistant Federal Defender at the Capital Habeas Unit of Philadelphia’s Federal Community Defender Office. Christina earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from Howard University. 

Christina will be in conversation with Marie McGehee. Marie is a global communications leader and reputation strategist with extensive experience in high-profile Fortune 500 companies. Today she leads communications and corporate affairs at The Estée Lauder Companies, North America. She lives in Maplewood with her husband Frank (former Mayor of the Township of Maplewood), their daughter Madison and their dog Sunshine.

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein is a Professor of the Practice in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement. He is the Director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative.

He works to develop and promote public health strategies, healthcare payment approaches, and regulatory policies that advance health and equity.

A pediatrician by training, he is a former health commissioner of Baltimore, Principal Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. FDA, and health secretary of Maryland. As health commissioner of Baltimore, he led an effort to expand access to addiction treatment with buprenoprhine that contributed to a two-thirds decline in fatal heroin overdoses over the course of a decade.

With respect to the opioid crisis, Dr. Sharfstein has advised states and localities, published articles and co-authored the book, The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know, published in 2019 by the Oxford University Press. He is also the author of The Public Health Crisis Survival Guide: Leadership and Management in Trying Times. 

Dr. Sharfstein will be in conversation with Emily Witkowski, Emily holds Masters Degrees in Public Health and Library Science. She is the Teen Services Librarian for Maplewood Library, and currently works with the Maplewood Middle and Columbia High School libraries while the Main library is closed for construction.

Emma Laperruque is the food editor at Food52 and an award-winning columnist for Big Little Recipes. Emma’s debut cookbook, Food 52’s Big Little Recipes, inspired by her column, is a clever cookbook featuring 60 new recipes using five or fewer ingredients.

Previously, she worked as a line cook, middle-of-the-night baker, and journalist. She lives in Maplewood with her husband and their cat, Butter.

Food52 is a leading innovator in the food, cooking, and home space. The brand was founded to be the best, most comprehensive resource for people who see food as the center of a well-lived life.

This is a virtual program. REGISTER HERE.

Emma will be in conversation with Hank Zona, wine educator and Events Professional.  Hank, who lives in Maplewood hosts events and produces wine-related content. He has written about wine and spirits for Travel+Leisure, The Wall Street Journal,  Food52, Edible Jersey and Jersey's Best. You can find him on social media at The Grapes Unwrapped.

Actors Sandy Rustin, Becky Gulsvig and Sara Farrington will talk about what kept their creativity and enthusiasm for their craft alive during the pandemic.
Sandy Rustin is an actress and award-winning playwright. She lives in Maplewood and is the Founding Co-Artistic Director of Midtown Direct Rep. Her adaptation of the cult-hit film, Clue, recently finished a successful run at The Papermill Playhouse.
Becky Gulsvig is a singer, actor and dancer. She lives in Maplewood and has performed on and Off-Broadway, on TV and in commercials. Her most recent role was as Beverly in the national tour of Come From Away.
Sara Farrington is a playwright and co-founder of the Foxy Films theater company. She and Foxy Films have been critically acclaimed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice and many more.Recent work includes Mendacity and BrandoCapote. Sara lives in Maplewood with her husband Reid and sons Jack and Levi.

The panel will be moderated by Amanda Eigen, Maplewood Library’s Head of Library Services.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

As the President and CEO of Consumer Reports, Marta L. Tellado leads America’s foremost consumer organization—an independent nonprofit that works side by side with consumers to advance truth, transparency, and fairness in the marketplace.  She is known as a transformational leader with a talent for innovation, a passion for public service, and a distinguished portfolio of accomplishments in mission-driven organizations.

Since joining CR in the fall of 2014, Tellado has transformed one of America’s most trusted brands and iconic social enterprises, uniting its rigorous research, consumer insights, award-winning journalism, and policy expertise to drive social impact.  Under her leadership, CR has evolved from a subscription organization to a 6-million strong membership organization, pioneered the testing of products and apps for privacy and digital security, won the 2018 Webby People’s Voice Award for best magazine website, and launched its first-ever TV shows on NBC and Telemundo—the former of which received a 2018 Parents’ Choice Award.  In 2018, Folio Magazine named Tellado one of the year’s ‘Top Women in Media,’ and CR has consistently been recognized with leading industry awards for its journalism, editorial design, and video content in recent years.

Marta came to CR following 25 years of experience that included executive roles in public service, philanthropy, and mission-driven nonprofit management.  At the Ford Foundation, she was Vice President for Global Communications and an officer of the board.  While there, she led strategic communications and advocacy on a range of issues in the U.S. and around the world, including economic fairness, free and fair access to an open internet, and civil rights.  Prior to that, she served as Executive Director of the Domestic Policy Group at the Aspen Institute and as Vice President of the Partnership for Public Service, where she launched the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government and the Service to America awards.  She began her career in the consumer advocacy movement working alongside Ralph Nader, and spent many years in public service as a senior advisor to Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey—the state where she was raised following her family’s journey from her birthplace of Havana, Cuba.

Marta attended Columbia High School and Fairleigh Dickinson University, and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.  She currently serves as a trustee on the boards of International Consumer Research & Testing, Consumers International, The Washington Center, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

DAVID BRANCACCIO is Host and Senior Editor of public radio’s Marketplace Morning Report, covering the business news you need to know to start your day. He’s also Host and Senior Editor of the PBS series NOW, the award-winning newsmagazine of investigative reporting and in-depth interviews, covering politics, human rights, national security, the environment, health care, and science policy.

In their group memoir, The Toni Morrison Book Club, these four authors use Toni Morrison’s novels as a springboard for intimate and revealing conversations about the problems of everyday racism. They discuss what it means to read challenging literature collaboratively and to learn in public as an act of individual reckoning and social resistance.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Juda Bennett is the author of Toni Morrison and the Queer Pleasure of Ghosts (SUNY, 2014), Essays Unzipped (Peterson’s, 2007), The Passing Figure (Peter Lang, 1997), and numerous articles on race and sexuality.  He is a Professor of English at The College of New Jersey. He lived in 3 hippie communes in the 70s and 80s before becoming a professor, and is completing a memoir on gender expression and the 1970s.

Winnifred Brown-Glaude is the author of Higglers in Kingston: Women’s Informal Work in Jamaica (Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), editor of Doing Diversity in Higher Education: Faculty Leaders Share Challenges and Strategies (Rutgers University Press, 2009), and numerous articles on race, gender and sexuality in the Anglophone Caribbean. She is an Associate Professor in the departments of African American Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at The College of New Jersey.  She is currently working on a book that examines the impact of neoliberalism on the Jamaican society and public imagination.

Cassandra Jackson is the author of Barriers Between Us: Interracial Sex in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Indiana University Press, 2004) and Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (Routledge, 2010).  She is a Professor of English at The College of New Jersey. She has published her public commentary on race in American culture at The Huffington Post and The Washington Post. She is completing Grief’s Children, a memoir about being black and infertile.

Piper Kendrix Williams is the co-editor with Brian Norman of Re-presenting Segregation: Toward an Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow (SUNY 2012).  She is an Associate Professor in the English and African American Studies at The College of New Jersey. Currently, she is working on A Black American Love Story, a book that merges memoir, family biography, and cultural criticism.     

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Andrea Bernstein is the Peabody Award–winning cohost of the acclaimed WNYC/ProPublica podcast Trump, Inc., which won the prestigious 2019 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University award. In addition to broadcast appearances on outlets including PBS NewsHour, CNN, and Fresh Air, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York, and on NPR.

She is the author of American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.

Nancy Solomon is the managing editor of New Jersey Public Radio, which won a 2014 Peabody Award for Chris Christie, White House Ambitions and the Abuse of Power

Solomon fell in love with radio reporting and production at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, in 1995. She moved to New Jersey in 2001 and has been covering the state ever since. She has produced more than a hundred stories for NPR and was a 2008-09 Spencer Fellow in Education Reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. During that year, Solomon produced “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students” for which she won a Peabody Award. Long before becoming a journalist, Solomon was the first woman ever hired to work on the county road crew in Portland, Oregon.

She lives in Maplewood, N.J. with her wife and three kids.

VIDEO NOT AVAILABLE

Ibi Zoboi and Dr. Yusef Salaam will discuss their powerful new book,  Punching the Air, which they co-authored. Moderated by Dr. Khadijah Costley White.

Punching the Air has been described as “a masterwork of humanity,” “a vital story for young readers in a tumultuous time,” and “an unfiltered perspective of the anti-Blackness upholding the U.S. criminal justice system.” The publisher is partnering with nonprofit organizations to donate copies of this book to incarcerated youth.

Dr. Salaam is a poet, motivational speaker, criminal justice reform advocate, and a member of the Exonerated Five. Dr. Salaam was one of five teenagers who were wrongfully incarcerated and became known as the “Central Park Five.” You can find him online at yusefspeaks.com

Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times Bestselling author of My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich (Penguin, 2019), her middle grade debut, and the Young Adult novels Pride (HaperCollins, 2018) and American Street (HarperCollins, 2017), a National Book Award Finalist and recipient of five starred reviews. She is also the editor of Black Enough:Stories of Being Young & Black in America (HarperCollins, 2019). Ms. Zoboi holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. As an educator, she is the recipient of several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti. She has worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools.

She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with her husband and their three children. You can find her online at www.ibizoboi.net.

Dr. Khadijah Costley White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Previously she worked as a journalist on an Emmy-nominated team at NOW on PBS (formerly NOW with Bill Moyers) and a New York City Teaching Fellow. She is the author of The Branding of Right-Wing Activism: The News Media and the Tea Party.

She has published work in numerous scholarly journals and books, and presented her research at conferences and universities around the world. White's writing and commentary on topics such as race, social movements, news, and politics has appeared in Vice, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Root and more. In 2007 the National Association of Black Journalists and United Nations awarded her a reporting fellowship to Senegal. She has also received the University of Pennsylvania Women of Color at Penn Award, an Emerging Diversity Scholar citation from the University of Michigan, and served as a White House intern on the Obama administration’s Broadcast Media team.  Additionally, she has consulted for the Ken Burns’ film company “Florentine Films” and served the MacArthur Foundation as an external advisor in journalism and media.  She received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and is a proud Swarthmore College alum.

As an activist and community organizer, White has helped lead community actions against police violence, mobilized concerned citizens via social media, organized events and programs related to racial justice, convened panels, lectures and teach-ins, and spoken at rallies and other community events. She is also a mom of two, Ella and Akin.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Mary Barr Mann and Carolyn Parisi will be receiving the Carol Buchanan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Civic and Intellectual Life 

Mary Barr Mann is the co-founder of local news site VillageGreenNJ.com and the statewide calendar site NJNext. Mary was editor of Maplewood Patch from October 2009 through May 2012 as well as Union County regional editor at Patch through 2012. She formerly worked at the Springfield Avenue Partnership and for and with other area business and neighborhood economic development agencies (in Red Bank, Philadelphia, Newark, Bloomfield, DUMBO, Long Island City), and was the Deputy Director at Montclair State University’s NJ News Commons and Center for Cooperative Media. Mary now works as a Communications Specialist at Montclair State University.

Carolyn Parisi is the co-founder of local news site VillageGreenNJ.com and the statewide event calendar site, NJNext Carolyn previously was editor of Maplewood Patch and South Orange Patch. She also contributed to and edited Livingston and West Orange Patches, was a regular contributor for The New York Times “The Local” blog and wrote for and edited Baristanet. She is a writer and editor with more than 25 years of experience in print and digital journalism, grant writing and development, marketing and public relations. Carolyn currently serves as publisher and managing editor of Village Green and NJ Next.

Nancy Solomon is the managing editor of New Jersey Public Radio, which won a 2014 Peabody Award for Chris Christie, White House Ambitions and the Abuse of Power

Solomon fell in love with radio reporting and production at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, in 1995. She moved to New Jersey in 2001 and has been covering the state ever since. She has produced more than a hundred stories for NPR and was a 2008-09 Spencer Fellow in Education Reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. During that year, Solomon produced “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students” for which she won a Peabody Award. Long before becoming a journalist, Solomon was the first woman ever hired to work on the county road crew in Portland, Oregon.

She lives in Maplewood, N.J. with her wife and three kids.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Abby Sher is an award-winning writer and performer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Self, Jane, Elle, and more. Her latest book, Sanctuary, was co-written with Paola Mendoza. 

Sher is the author of Miss You Love You Hate You Bye, All the Ways the World Can End, Breaking Free: True Stories of Girls Who Escaped Modern Slavery, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying, and Kissing Snowflakes.

One of her essays was optioned by Amazon for the "Modern Love" television series. Abby has written and performed for The Second City, Upright Citizen's Brigade, HBO and NPR. She is currently a co-producer of the Chucklepatch Comedy Show and she lives in Maplewood, NJ with her awesome family. www.abby-sher.com

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Wife of the late David Carr and editor of his book Final Draft. Jill Rooney Carr works in hospitality in the New York City area. She and David Carr married in 1994. She will be in conversation with New York Times reporter John Schwartz.

Final Draft is a career-spanning selection of the legendary reporter David Carr’s writing for The New York Times, Washington City Paper, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and more.

David Carr was one of the most prolific and celebrated journalists of our time. Carr edited and wrote for a wide variety of publications, including the Twin City Reader in Minneapolis, the

Washington City Paper, Inside.com, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and the New York Times, where he created The Carpetbagger and the Media Equation columns. His memoir, The Night of the Gun, in which he chronicled his battles with substance addictions and his ultimate recovery, was a national bestseller. In 2015, Carr died at the age of 58.  

Throughout his 25-year journalistic career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit. His writing was informed both by his own hardships as an addict, and his intense love of the journalist’s craft.

His range—from media politics to national politics, from rock ‘n’ roll celebrities to the unknown civil servants who make our daily lives function—was broad and often timeless. Whether he was breaking exclusives about Amazon or mourning Philip

Seymour Hoffman’s death or taking aim at editors who valued political trivia over substance, Carr’s voice and concerns remain enormously influential and relevant. In these hundred or so articles, from a range of publications, we read his stories with fresh eyes. Edited by his widow, Jill Rooney Carr, and with an introduction written by one of the many journalists David Carr mentored and promoted Ta-Nehisi Coates, Final Draft is a singular event in the world of writing news, an art increasingly endangered in these troubled times.

John Schwartz is a reporter at The New York Times, where he is part of the NYT's climate change team. In nearly 20 years at the Times, he has covered science, business, law and many other topics that have taken him from the Mojave Desert to Moscow, and from Nanjing to Nashville; he has explored the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, tumbled in zero gravity, flown a jetpack, and reported stories from river dredges, helicopters and sewers. His most recent book is "This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order," a memoir and financial guide. A native of Galveston, Texas, John is married to Jeanne Mixon, his college sweetheart. They have three children.

Art & Music Reception

Muyambo Marcel Chishimba was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1950. He was taught as a young boy to paint by his uncle, Kabemba Albert Stounas, an acclaimed artist in Congo. As a young man, Chishimba travelled to neighboring Zambia to further his studies and exhibit his work. Over the course of a number of years, Chishimba exhibited in Zambia, Swaziland, and Malawi. In 1993, after the death of his first wife amid extreme conflict in his homeland, Chishimba fled south to the Zambian border as a refugee.

Chishimba’s life as a painter continued sporadically while he lived in a Zambian refugee camp with his family and second wife, Mary. Never one to falter in the face of challenges, Chishimba painted and sold portraits and landscapes for nearly 20 years living in the camp, in order to buy enough food to feed his family. His stunning portraiture caught the attention of former Zambian President, Kenneth Kaunda during the president’s visit to the camp.

After becoming fast friends, Mr. Kaunda arranged for the Chishimba family to move into town in 2010, where Chishimba continued to paint, exhibit his work, and teach, demonstrating a variety of techniques to budding artists.

Chishimba and his family later applied for resettlement, spent several years in the vetting process, then finally left Zambia and settled in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the summer of 2019, where he now continues his 50+ year career as an artist, painting abstracts and landscapes with oil on canvas. His bold, dynamic strokes and his unique combination of earthy tones and richly hued colors are inspired by the culture and people of his African homeland.

While his preferred medium is oil on canvas, Chishimba paints using acrylic and watercolor as well, and is also an accomplished sculptor. As an artist, teacher, and father of 8 children, he now passes on the family craft by teaching several of his children to paint.

This year’s theme is A day of Vocational Ed for kids, teens and adults. 

March 21st, 10 am-1 pm at Hilton Branch

Activities include:

• Soldering

• Make art with a Stencil Duplicator Machine

• Sew a felt emoji keychain

• Build with Maplewoodshop 

• Assemble soup mix in a jar

• Construct an Air Powered Rocket

• Robot demonstration by the Columbia High School Robotics Team

Out of an abundance of caution, we are very sorry and disappointed to announce that we’ve had to cancel our event with Barry Sonnenfeld. The health and safety of our patrons is our top priority, and we’ll continue to keep you informed about the rest of the Ideas Festival as the virus situation progresses.

Barry Sonnenfeld is a filmmaker and writer who broke into the film industry as the cinematographer on the Coen Brothers' first three films: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller's Crossing. He also was the director of photography on Throw Mamma from the Train, Big, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery. Sonnenfeld made his directorial debut with The Addams Family in 1991, and has gone on to direct a number of films including Addams Family Values, Get Shorty, and the first three Men in Black films. His television credits include Pushing Daisies, for which he won an Emmy, and most recently Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Matthew Galkin is a documentary filmmaker who founded New York-based production company Fairhaven in 2018. Film work includes HBO’s Kevorkian, a multi-faceted biography of famed assisted-suicide activist Jack Kevorkian; the award-winning HBO documentary I am an Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA, about the controversial animal rights group and it’s enigmatic founder; and loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies, chronicling the 2004 reunion tour of the seminal rock band.

Television work includes Showtime’s first-ever true crime series Murder in the Bayou, the award-winning CNN series Inside Man, HBO’s Family Bonds, A&E’S anthology documentary series Cultureshock, and the forthcoming CNBC limited series Empires of New York, about the city’s rebirth in the 1980’s.

He lives in South Orange with his wife Chloe, their two children, and a dog named Willie Nelson Galkin.