UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Maryemma Graham, distinguished professor at the University of Kansas and author of “The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker” (2022), will read from the biography at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 16, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus. The reading is free and open to the public.

Graham transitioned from a career in journalism to a very successful career centered in recovery work, literary studies, Black book history, and Digital Humanities. She has written a dozen books and more than 60 book chapters, articles, and essays in the areas African American and Diasporic literature and culture.

Graham founded the History of Black Writing (HBW) — a documentary, literary and archival project that has been devoted to the preservation and teaching of African American literature and culture since 1983. “The Cambridge History of African American Literature” (2011), co-written with Jerry W. Ward Jr., the first history of African American writing to be published in the 21st century, is based on HBW’s research and has become one of the most influential books on Black writing.

Graham received her baccalaureate from the University of North Carolina, her master of arts in English from Northwestern University, and her doctorate in English from Cornell University. She is a John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow; she has also received more than 20 grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and major funding from the Ford and Mellon foundations.

Whether through the Langston Hughes National Poetry Project, the Language Matters partnership with the Toni Morrison Society, or the Black Book Interactive Project together with its Scholars Program, Graham has devoted her career to helping to reconceptualize the meaning and purpose of the humanities for all people inside and outside of higher education.

“The House Where My Soul Lives” is the first biography written about poet and writer Margaret Walker (1915-1998). It includes 80 archival photos and documents, along with never-before examined personal papers and interviews with those who knew Walker personally. Well-known scholar, Paula J. Giddings, says this of the biography: “At once a radiant memorial, a clear-eyed portrait and an intellectual history, Graham's biography of writer Margaret Walker is an extraordinary study of an extraordinary woman."

The upcoming reading receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, and the Department of African American Studies.