When Brent White read Daniel Beaty’s Knock, Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me to his children, something happened. A tune White had written years ago came back to him. White — trombonist, composer, Assistant Teaching Professor at Drexel, and electrical engineer — had played it at the Philadelphia Detention Center…

Saturday, 24 September 2022, launches One Book One Norristown featuring The Price of a Child. Thanks and praise for Director Monica D’Antonio, who has created so many carefully crafted elements to promote literacy, community, and conversation around this program and book! Thanks to the Norristown NAACP, and director Angelique Hinton…

On Friday, 10 June, 2022, I was privileged to accept Arden Theatre’s Master Storyteller Award. I roamed The Independence Visitor Center with guests for a sparkling outdoor-indoor fête and shared the evening’s honor with (came-through-the-pandemic) Board Chair Bob Elfant, who received the award for Leadership and Service. Special thanks to…

This is what I learned in Opera Camp, which is how my family and I referred to the American Lyric Theater’s Composer-Librettist Development Program: find a story that sings when the composer reads it. The story will have been inside her all along, inside the musicians so that they can…

Jerry Pinkney’s legacy: honesty with children about the precariousness of life — and the power of generosity. In 2016, one of my students’ publications, SafeKidsStories.com, spearheaded an initiative that resulted in Philadelphia’s first Jerry Pinkney Day. It was July 19. The Mayor and his Office of Art, Culture, and the Creative Economy led the day. Jerry and Gloria came to Philadelphia and met with children everywhere, in…

The first time I went to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture was its dedication ceremony exactly five years ago. Today, for the anniversary, I went inside where friends from so many centuries welcomed us in. Richard Allen’s money box was the first thing that made me cry. …

When I wrote the final revision of Black Ice about my years as a Black girl at St. Paul’s boarding school in its early years of coeducation and integration, I aimed to create complexity through a text that fitted easily, casually, like a great pair of jeans. It’s memoir, not…

My husband’s last sermon — Last week when I asked what was the assigned text for him to preach on, my husband, the Rev. Bob Smith, said he’d been trying to run down translations again. Old translations of Matthew 4:19 have Jesus telling fishermen Simon and Andrew that if they follow him, he’ll make them…

Someone has slit in half the 30-foot-long Black Lives Matter banner outside our St. Luke and the Epiphany. For the second time. This summer, four of our #VoteThatJawn interns danced a TikTok in front of that banner. I videotaped them with my phone from across the street. Cars passed between…