As one of the leading scholars and creative minds in Afrofuturism and Black Futures, Walidah Imarisha will be discussing how science fiction and visionary fiction can be used for social change.

A historian at heart, reporter by (w)right, rebel by reason, Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, public scholar and spoken word artist.

She edited two anthologies, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements and Another World is Possible. Imarisha’s nonfiction book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption won a 2017 Oregon Book Award. She is also the author of the poetry collection Scars/Stars.

Imarisha has taught in Stanford University’s Program of Writing and Rhetoric, Pacific Northwest College of the Art’s Masters in Critical Studies Program, Portland State University’s Black Studies Department, and Oregon State University’s Women Gender Sexuality Studies Department.

For six years, she presented statewide as a public scholar with Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project on topics such as Oregon Black history, alternatives to incarceration, and the history of hip hop.

She has toured the country several times performing, lecturing and challenging, and has shared the stage with folks as different as Angela Davis, Cornel West, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Kenny Muhammad of the Roots, Chuck D, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Robin D.G. Kelley, Umar bin Hassan from The Last Poets, Boots Riley, Saul Williams, Ani DiFranco, John Irving, dead prez, Rebecca Solnit, and Yuri Kochiyama.

Q & A Panel

Facilitated Black Student Organization members: LaShawn McCartney, Asia Austin & Akeylah Giles.

Panelists

• Salimatu Amabebe, Multimedia artist, Chef of Bliss House and Black Feast, a monthly dining experience that celebrates Black artists and writers through food
• Akela Jaffi, Dancer, Creator of Black Sun, an entirely Black theater group
• Alley Pezanoski-Browne, Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center