Essayist and Fiction Writer to Speak About Race at University of Richmond

October 13, 2006

Essayist and fiction writer Reginald McKnight will discuss the difficulties of not recapitulating stereotypes when creating black characters in a talk at University of Richmond Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m.

The talk, titled “Mission Impossible IV: Writing Race to the Vanishing Point,” is free and open to the public. It will be held in Keller Hall Reception Room.

McKnight is Hamilton Holmes Professor at The University of Georgia, where he teaches both creative writing and literature. He is the prize-winning author of two novels, “Get on the Bus” and “He Sleeps,” and three collections of stories. His story, “The Kind of Light that Shines on Texas,” was included in the 1989 collection of the O. Henry Awards.

A Los Angeles Times reporter said McKnight “forces us to think about race, sex, denial, but even more significantly, he forces us to feel things that we may not want to but that lurk, somewhere, in all of us.” McKnight’s stories “explore race in the United States as well as in Africa,” said Bertram Ashe in African American Review. In his fiction, “multiculturalism is as likely to mean a clash of cultures between black people as it is between black and white people.”

McKnight’s talk is the second of a three-part series on race and writing sponsored by the Richmond Quest. For more information, contact Suzanne Jones, at (804) 289-8307.