The library will be hosting a lecture/reception on November 28th from 4 to 6 p.m. that provides insight into an upcoming Krannert Center production: No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. From the press release:
Both the lecture and the reception will take place in the Reading Room of the Main Library on campus from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., and feature actors from Manual Cinema: No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. The event is free and open to the public.
No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, a public performance taking place in the Colwell Playhouse at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. on November 29, 2018, is produced by Manual Cinema, an award-winning theatre troupe from Chicago, which uses “handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive visual stories for stage and screen.” No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks tells the story of Brooks, former Illinois Poet Laureate and the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. For more information about the public performance and to purchase tickets, visit KrannertCenter.com.
The extensive literary manuscripts and archives of Gwendolyn Brooks are part of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The archive, spanning more than six decades, includes some of Brooks’s early poetry and prose written when she was a teenager, as well as scrapbooks and clippings of pieces she published as a young woman in The Chicago Defender. In addition, the archive contains extensive correspondence, manuscripts, informal jottings, annotations, and observations. The largest portion of Brooks’s archive documents her career after leaving mainstream commercial publishing to produce her works with African-American-owned presses and imprints, including her own imprint, The David Company. For more information, visit library.illinois.edu/rbx.