In collaboration with the Aspen Institute Arts Program, the Park Avenue Armory has gathered artists, writers and cultural commentators to share their unique, ongoing, and evolving engagements with African American history. Moderated by writer and podcast host Stacia Brown, participants include vocalist and composer Imani Uzuri, multi-media artist Jasmine Murrell, novelist and playwright Darryl Pinckney, photographer and professor Deborah Willis, and writer Carl Hancock Rux.

Stacia L. Brown — A freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, New Republic, Slate, Vox, Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan and various other publications. Stacia is also the creator and host of “Baltimore: The Rise of Charm City”, a 30-minute audio documentary series featuring the oral histories of businesses, landmarks, and neighborhoods in Baltimore City.

Jasmine Murrell — A Brooklyn-based visual artist who makes work about miracles, miracles that happen in the worst of times and in the most invisible places. She uses a wide range of media including installation, sculpture, land art, and film to invoke a transformative experience around historical erasures.

Darryl Pinckney — A novelist, playwright, essayist, and longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books. His new novel, Black Deutschland, was published on February 2, 2016.

Carl Hancock Rux — An award-winning poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, and recording artist. He is the former head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of the Arts (2006–09) and has taught or been in residence at the University of California–San Diego, Stanford University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hollins University, the University of Iowa, and Brown University.

Imani Uzuri — Vocalist, composer and cultural worker Imani Uzuri creates music that reflects her rural North Carolina roots where she grew up singing Spirituals and line-singing hymns with her grandmother and extended family in their small rural church. Uzuri was a 2015 Park Avenue Armory artist-in-residence, and will make her Lincoln Center American Songbook debut in March 2016 performing songs that celebrate Black American vernacular music.

Deborah Willis, Ph.D. — Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Professor Willis has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Fletcher, and MacArthur fellowships, the Infinity Award in Writing from the International Center for Photography, and recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award.