ACTORS & ARTISTS
Tayari Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage, a 2018 Oprah’s Book Club Selection and winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction, as well as Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, and Leaving Atlanta. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. She has been awarded the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the NAACP Image Award, among other honors. Jones serves as Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University. In 2019, she was appointed an A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University.
Fran Lebowitz is a humorist and public speaker, famed for her wry social commentaries. She is the author of the essay collections Metropolitan Life, Social Studies, and The Fran Lebowitz Reader, as well as the children’s book Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas. Her pieces have appeared in Interview, Mademoiselle, Vanity Fair, and other publications. Lebowitz has appeared in the documentaries American Experience, Beautiful Darling, and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, and has also been featured in The Wolf of Wall Street and Law & Order, in addition to her frequent guest appearances on late-night television. She is the subject of the documentary Public Speaking, directed by Martin Scorsese.
S. Epatha Merkerson has won critical acclaim for her work in theater, television, and film. She is best known for her 17-season run as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on NBC’s Law & Order, for which she received three NAACP Image awards. She currently plays Sharon Goodwin on NBC’s Chicago Med. Her role in the HBO film Lackawanna Blues earned her Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and NAACP Image awards. Additional film credits include Terminator II: Judgement Day, Radio, Peeples, and Lincoln. Her theater credits include Come Back Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony nomination, August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, for which she received Tony, Drama Desk, and Helen Hayes award nominations, Obie award-winning roles in Birdie Blue and I’m Not Stupid, Billy Porter’s While Yet I Live, The Roomate, and A Raisin in the Sun at Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Phylicia Rashad, an accomplished actress and stage director, became a household name when she portrayed Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show, a character whose appeal has earned numerous honors and awards for over two decades. Her film and television credits include A Fall From Grace, Creed, For Colored Girls, This Is Us, for which she earned an Emmy nomination, David Makes Man, and Empire, as well as the forthcoming Soul. Inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2016, Rashad received Tony and Drama Desk awards for her performance as Lena Younger in A Raisin in the Sun, the Lucille Lortel Award for her performance as Shelah in Head of Passes, and a Tony nomination for her portrayal of Aunt Ester in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. Rashad has directed Gem of the Ocean, Fences, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, Our Lady of 121st Street by Stephen Adly Guirgis, and Immediate Family by Paul Oakley Stovall, all at prestigious regional and off-Broadway theaters.
Anika Noni Rose won the Tony Award for Caroline, or Change and was nominated for a Tony for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as well as A Raisin in the Sun. Additional stage credits include Footloose, Eli’s Coming, Carmen Jones, for which she won a Lucille Lortel Award, Encores! productions of The Cradle Will Rock and Purlie, and the New York Philharmonic's production of Company. Television credits include The Good Wife, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Bates Motel, Power, the miniseries Roots, The Quad, Little Fires Everywhere, and Them: Covenant. Rose’s film credits include Dreamgirls; The Princess & The Frog; For Colored Girls; Half of a Yellow Sun; Everything, Everything; Assassination Nation; The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain; and Body Cam. She will appear in the forthcoming films Jingle Jangle and The Outlaw Johnny Black. Rose is a three-time NAACP Image Award nominee.
