Glory Edim
Founder of Well-Read Black Girl, an online platform and book club celebrating the works of Black women authors
Natalie Y. Moore
Award-winning journalist and author, and senior lecturer and director of audio programming at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University
Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me
BONUS BOOK GIVEAWAY! We are giving away copies of Gather Me to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page.
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older, she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, Edim found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
Edim’s new book, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me, is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.
Edim will be in conversation with Natalie Y. Moore, an award-winning journalist and author and senior lecturer and director of audio programming at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.
Event Sponsors
- The Avery Coonley School
- Baker Demonstration School
- Beacon Academy
- Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School
- Brickton Montessori School
- British International School of Chicago, Lincoln Park
- British International School of Chicago, South Loop
- Catherine Cook School
- Compass Health Center
- Countryside Day School
- Evanston Township High School D202
- Family Service Center
- Foundation 65
- The Frances Xavier Warde School
- Francis W. Parker School
- Glencoe D35
- Gorton Center
- Haven Youth and Family Services
- Hyde Park Day School
- Illinois Student Assistance Commission
- Kenilworth D38
- Lake Bluff D65
- Lake Forest Academy
- Lake Forest Community High School D115
- Lake Forest Country Day School
- Latin School of Chicago
- Leo Catholic High School
- Libertyville D70
- Lycée Français de Chicago
- Near North Montessori School
- North Shore Country Day
- Northwestern University Office of Neighborhood and Community Relations
- Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy
- Pope John XXIII School
- Regina Dominican College Preparatory High School
- Resurrection College Prep High School
- Rogers Park Montessori School
- Roycemore School
- Santa Clara University School of Law
- The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School
- Stevenson High School D125
- UChicago Network for College Success
- University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
- Wilmette Public Library
- Wolcott College Prep
- Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart
- Youth & Opportunity United (Y.O.U.)
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