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MidnightRose: A Reading Series of Poetry and Prose

Esther Productions Inc., The Institute for African American Writing, and the Black Student Fund present a reading by Tracy Chiles McGhee and Bernardine Watson

MidnightRose is a showcase of the multigenerational, multicultural writers in the Washington Metropolitan Region and beyond. Experience the richness of the community through the presentations of award-winning poets and authors.

Registration is not required to attend, but is encouraged.

About the Authors

Tracy Chiles McGhee is an award-winning author, cultural curator, and independent scholar. She is the author of the historical novel Melting the Blues, winner of six awards including the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Book for Fiction and the Independent Publisher Book Award Bronze Medal.

McGhee is a 2025 DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellow and a 2025 HumanitiesDC Community Culture & Heritage Grant Award Recipient. She was a 2024 HumanitiesDC Independent Practitioner Fellow and holds the distinction of being named the Inaugural HumanitiesDC Literature Fellow.

McGhee is also the visionary behind Salon Redux: In the Spirit of Georgia Douglas Johnson, a DC citywide initiative that reimagines the historic S Street Salon to build community.

A graduate of Georgetown University and Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, McGhee’s mission is to highlight and preserve “herstory” as well as to spark joy and creativity - multiple stories at a time.

Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, DC. She has written on social policy issues for major foundations, nonprofit organizations, and The Washington Post Health and Science section and She the People blog. Dine’s memoir Transplant won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction and appeared on National Public Radio’s 2023 list of “Books We Love.” Dine was selected by Poets and Writers magazine as one of their “5 over 50” debut authors for 2023. Her poetry has been published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon/Mid Atlantic Review, Gargoyle Magazine, and Dark House Books. In 2023, two of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Dine is a member of the 2015 class of the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities The Poet in Progress Program and the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers’ Workshop for Poetry. She sits on the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Board of Directors.

About the Series

MidnightRose will continue this fall and winter with upcoming sessions featuring the following authors:

• November 8: Sami Miranda and Michele Evans
• December 13: Anne Becker, Kenneth Carroll III, and Richard Peabody
• January 10:  Carolyn Forche and Sierra Fisher

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