*Questions? Call the The Book Lady at 912-233-3628 to find out more or to arrange book signings if you cannot attend.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
SYLVIANE DIOUF is an award-winning historian of the African Diaspora and a curator. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, and Lloyd International Honors College, University of North Carolina Greensboro. Diouf is a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Maison des Esclaves project on Goree Island, Senegal. She is on the Board of Trustees of the African Diaspora International Film Festival.
A social historian who authored and edited thirteen books and curated ten exhibitions, Dr. Diouf focuses on uncovering essential stories and topics that offer new insights into the African Diaspora. She has a special interest in the experience of the Africans deported to the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, of enslaved African Muslims, and in marronage.
She is the author of Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (NYU Press, 2014) the first book on the experience of Maroons in the United States; and Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (NYU Press, 1998). The fifteenth anniversary edition of Servants of Allah—named Outstanding Academic Book in 1999—was released in 2013. Dr. Diouf's book Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (Oxford University Press, 2007) received the 2007 Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association, the 2009 Sulzby Award of the Alabama Historical Association and was a finalist for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
GEORGE DAWES GREEN, founder of The Moth, is an internationally celebrated and bestselling author. His first novel, The Caveman’s Valentine, won the Edgar Award and became a motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson. The Juror was an international bestseller in more than twenty languages and was the basis for the movie starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Ravens was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail of London, and many other publications. Green grew up in Georgia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Green’s just published novel, The Kingdoms of Savannah (Celadon/Macmillan), is summed up perfectly by Dr. Paul Pressly, “…the reviews call his story ‘a finely crafted mystery, thought-provoking social commentary and an indelible portrait of a complicated city.’ But it offers much more. The author has placed at the center of his mystery the maroon community on Belleisle and Bear Creek that existed during the 1780s. I stand in awe of a novelist who would dare to make Black resistance in the eighteenth century the driver of a contemporary murder story. “
Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods says, "The Kingdoms of Savannah is a novel about a place and the people in that place that reads like a thriller but could only have been written by someone who knows Savannah and its stories intimately and wants them to be told. It’s the apotheosis of Southern Gothic Noir."
PAUL M. PRESSLY is director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, a partnership between the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the Ossabaw Island Foundation. He is the author of On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (UGA Press, 2013), co-editor of Coastal Nature, Coastal Culture: Environmental Histories of the Georgia Coast (UGA Press, 2018), and a contributor to African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee (UGA Press, 2010).
Pressly is currently working on his forthcoming book with UGA Press (2023), Borders of Freedom: Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Indian Lands, that traces 18th and 19th century escapes from the seacoast to other cultures and lands. These marronage stories speak to the influence of African Americans and their resistance to the expansion of Anglo-Americans and the role they played in shaping the balance-of-power in the region.
RICHARD KANASKI, uniquely positioned to speak to the past and future research and preservation possibilities of Belleisle, has served as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region's Regional Historic Preservation Officer/Regional Archaeologist since 1996. In this region, the Service owns or manages more than 4,000,000 acres on 131 National Wildlife Refuges.
Kanaski is responsible for the Region's historic preservation program, which includes maintaining the Regional Site and Museum Property Databases; ensuring compliance for Service programs and their projects; facilitating third party scientific archaeological investigations on Service land; and consulting with Indian Tribes regarding cultural resources and other related issues. Some of his most recent research involves collaborating with the Harris Neck Gullah Descendant Community to document sites and locations holding significance to them. He has partnered with community-based groups seeking to preserve historic buildings and archaeological sites on Refuges. Significant achievements of these efforts include the acquisition of the Byrd Hammock Site at St. Marks. Other partnerships involve fostering university-based archaeological investigations on Service lands.