Visiting Writers Series at the University of Redlands to take place on Thursday, November 10.

The Creative Writing Department is pleased to announce its third Visiting Writers Series event of Fall 2011, an evening with essayist and journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan, who will be reading from and discussing her new book Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, And Walking The Color Line: Dispatches From A Black Journalista (Northeastern University Press).

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Erin Aubry Kaplan has written about African-American political, economic and cultural issues since 1992. The first black columnist in the history of the Los Angeles Times, she also regularly contributes to many publications such as Salon.com, Essence, Oxford-American, Black Enterprise, BlackAmericaWeb, Ms. and the Independent. As a journalist, Erin’s passion has always been injecting the personal into features, commentary, criticism, and essays. Her piece, “Blue Like Me,” explored the modern connections between her own long battle with depression, family history and the still-distressing state of the race and won the PEN USA 2001 award for journalism. Erin’s essays have been anthologized in several books, including Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood (Villard, Washington Square Press), Step Into A World (Wiley & Sons) and Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood (Doubleday). The last book’s contributors include Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks and Alice Walker, and it won an American Book Award in 2004.

Please join us for a reading by Erin Aubry Kaplan on Thursday, November 10 at 7:30 in Hall of Letters 100, to be followed by a reception and book signing with the author. This event is free and open to the public.

The Visiting Writers Series will resume in January with an evening with David Ulin, the book critic for the Los Angeles Times and author of The Lost Art of Reading.

For more information please contact the Creative Writing Department at (909) 748-8260