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Authors, Activists, Artists Speak!

Writing Our Story; Righting Our History

Celebrate Women's History Month at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library for a cultural gathering that honors and celebrates Black women through the lens of Herstory, past and present.

At this pivotal moment, the gathering affirms Black women as vital architects of American memory, imagination, and change.

Authors, Activists, Artists Speak! Writing Our Story, Righting Our History invites you to gather on International Women’s Day for a vibrant afternoon celebrating Black women as authors, activists, and artists whose voices continue to shape culture, memory, and change.

Join us for an author talk with Tiffany D. Cross on her new book Love, Me: A Letter to Black Women in a Toxic Country, Career, and Relationship and a panel conversation featuring Washington Informer publisher Denise Rolark Barnes, Howard University Dean and author Dana A. Williams, Black Women’s Roundtable convener Melanie L. Campbell and multidisciplinary artist Nina Angela Mercer, followed by lightning talks offering reflections, short storytelling, and calls to action from biographer A’Lelia Bundles, novelist Diane McKinney-Whetstone, memoirist Bernardine Watson, and economist Rhonda Sharpe.

The afternoon also features spoken word and artistic expressions, “In the Loop” video presentations, a bookshop with titles by participating authors, and a storytelling station for shared reflection and community connection.

Register today and bring a friend!

Tiffany D. Cross is a journalist, TV and host, author, and speaker. She is the author of “Love, Me: A Letter to Black Women in a Toxic Country, Career, and Relationship.” Tiffany previously hosted The Cross Connection on MSNBC where she averaged 4.6 million viewers a month. She is also a former co-host of iHeart Media’s Native Land Pod, which debuted in 2024 on Apple as the number one downloaded podcast in America across all categories, where she would break down news and culture of the week.

Denise Rolark Barnes is the publisher of The Washington Informer, the influential Black-owned newspaper founded by her father, Dr. Calvin W. Rolark, Sr. in 1964. She joined the paper in 1980 and became publisher in 1994, guiding its growth as a modern multimedia news and community institution in Washington, D.C. President of the Washington Informer Charities which promotes literacy, she is recognized for civic leadership tied to Black press legacy and community impact.

Dr. Dana A. Williams is the Dean of the Howard University Graduate School and Professor of  African-American literature. She serves on several boards and is the immediate past president of the Toni Morrison Society and the Modern Language Society. Her latest book is Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship (Amistad 2025), a study of Toni Morrison’s editorial legacy and influence.

Melanie L. Campbell is an activist and the President & CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable. Campbell is widely known as a coalition builder and is highly successful in leading and organizing large-scale civic engagement campaigns and advancing voting rights and democratic participation. Campbell has been featured in ESSENCE, Washington Post, USA Today, Washington Informer, and other publications.

Dr. Nina Angela Mercer is a multidisciplinary artist, playwright, and scholar. She has taught across disciplines, currently at Howard University and is co-founder and executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, a nonprofit arts education organization. Her plays have been developed and presented in notable cultural spaces, and her practice bridges scholarship, theater, and community-rooted arts work. Dr. Mercer’s latest publication is The Double, a choreodrama and a choreopoem.

Performances by

ariana kija matondo (they/she) is a queer disabled Tanzanian-American poet, editor, and teacher based in Tampa, Florida. They are the winner of the Zora Neale Hurston Award for poetry (2025) and named a finalist for the Disquiet Prize for poetry (2025). She is also a previous recipient of the Sundress Publications Fellowship (2025), Vermont Studio Center Fellowship (2024), Light for Public Health Poetry Prize (2024), and the Bettye Newman Poetry Prize (2024-2025). They are currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of South Florida.

StoryTime! Presenters

A’Lelia Bundles is an award-winning author, journalist, and historian and the great-great-granddaughter of Madam C. J. Walker. Her latest book is Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance (2025), a biography of Walker’s daughter A’Lelia Walker and her role as a cultural patron during the Harlem Renaissance-era. Bundles is also the author of On Her Own Ground and is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives. She has worked in network television news for thirty years.

Diane McKinney-Whetstone is an award-winning novelist celebrated for richly drawn stories of Black life, family, and community, often rooted in Philadelphia. Her most recent novel is Family Spirit (Amistad 2025). She is also the author of acclaimed earlier works including Tumbling and Our Gen, and she has been recognized with the American Library Association’s Black Caucus Literary Award for Fiction (among other honors).

Dr. Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe is an economist and the founder and president of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race (WISER), a research institute focused on addressing the economic, social, cultural, and political well-being of women of color through better, disaggregated data. She has held national leadership roles, including serving as editor for The Review of Black Political Economy and past  president of the National Economic Association.

Bernardine “Dine” Watson is a Washington, D.C.–based nonfiction writer and poet.  Her poetry has also appeared in numerous journals. Her memoir, Transplant: A Memoir, won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction/creative nonfiction and was selected by NPR as one of its “Books We Love”. It has also been recognized by Poets & Writers as an over-50 debut spotlight. Watson’s work powerfully chronicles her decades-long experience with kidney disease and transplantation.

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