A Short Course led by Emily Bernard and Major Jackson
On the eve of the centenary publication of The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes’s debut volume of poetry, we are proud to present, “I, Too, Sing America.” We celebrate Langston Hughes’s life as an essential poet, playwright, memoirist, translator, and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. A writer who found inspiration in everyday people, their customs and music, Hughes’ evolution as a cultural and political writer inspired generations of writers on multiple continents. This short course will close read his most important and some obscure poems while addressing his significance as an American writer who, along with his contemporaries, first ushered in the possibilities of literature to address the dreams, aspirations, and political freedom of human beings around the globe. In addition, we will also discuss several prose works by Hughes that dramatize his perspectives on the complex dynamics between Black artists and their expanding readerships, consuming audiences, and structures of support in the twentieth century.
Register
Dates & Times: Online Tuesdays from August 26 to September 23. Main sessions run from 4 pm-6 pm (Pacific) with optional discussion groups to follow.
- Tuesday, August 26, 2025
- Tuesday, September 2, 2025
- Tuesday, September 9, 2025
- Tuesday, September 16, 2025
- Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Note: For those who are interested, intimate Zoom discussion groups (Virtual Houses) will meet after each session and on subsequent Saturdays at 10 AM.
Course Texts
For this course, our texts will be
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Reissue)
The Ways of White Folks (Vintage Classics)
Participants who don’t own the text are asked to purchase at least the required text, if possible, before August 26.
Handouts for each session will be posted online. Additional reading materials, including essays and poems will be added.
Bios
Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio. Black is the Body won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Emily’s previous books include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendship, which was chosen by the New York Public Library as a Book for the Teen Age; and, with Deborah Willis, Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, which received a 2010 NAACP Image Award. Her work has appeared in: Harper’s, TLS, The New Republic, The New Yorker, O the Oprah Magazine, Image,Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Nonfiction. She has received fellowships from the Alphonse A. Fletcher Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, MacDowell, the Vermont Arts Council, Yale University, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. A 2024-2025 fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Emily is the 2024-2025 Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University. Photo credit: Andy Duback
Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023), The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. He is also the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jacksonedited by Amor Kohli. A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry London, and World Literature Today. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review. Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan
What to Expect:
- Five, two-hour weekly sessions online with assigned reading. The group can be large, depending on the course.
- In the first 60 or 70 minutes, Bernard and Jackson will explore and supply background on the previously assigned readings.
- In the second part, Bernard and Jackson will address questions and widen the discussion. Participant questions and comments will be submitted in the chat.
- Optional small (8-10 person) discussion groups will be available to those with the energy and interest after the formal session is over. Discussion guides will be provided.
- These sessions will be recorded, and will be available for later viewing by registered participants for 30 days following the final session
Tuition:
- Early Bird Tuition is $270 (deadline: midnight on Tuesday, August 19)
- Standard Tuition is $300.
- Limited financial aid available. Please contact us if needed.
Register Now
The Writers Annex
Online, and year-round, The Writers’ Annex is composed of short courses, seminars, workshops, and more. Our vision is to bring the creative insight and experience of our staff poets and prose writers to our community in all seasons, not just in the summertime, and not just here in our Valley. Our online offerings will address such topics as eco-poetics, translation, and generative sessions. Some will be one or two days, some will be weekend intensives, and some will meet weekly for a month or two. In addition, we hope these offerings will help offset the tremendous expenses we face as an organization for our traditional in-person events in Olympic Valley.