News & Events

UNC Asheville Hosts Talk by James Baldwin Biographer

April 2, 2010

UNC Asheville's History Department will host a talk on early 20th-century African American writer James Baldwin at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 6, in UNC Asheville's Laurel Forum, Karpen Hall. Magdalena J. Zaborowska, a noted author and Baldwin biographer, will discuss Baldwin's extended stays in Turkey, where he wrote some of his most important works. The event is free and open to the public.

Baldwin grew up in Harlem and Greenwich Village in the 1920s and '30s. Disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and homosexuals, Baldwin moved to Paris in 1948. There he was influenced by cultural radicalism of the Left Bank and began to write in earnest. He was the author of several noted novels and collections of essays and continued to write until his death from stomach cancer in 1987.

Zaborowska is the author of "James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile," which was the winner of the 2008 William S. Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association. In addition, she is author and editor of several other texts on literature. Zaborowska serves as an associate professor at the University of Michigan's Program in American Culture and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.

For more information, call UNC Asheville's History Department at 828/251-6415.