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UNCA Hosts Award-Winning Author, Journalist Clint Smith January 18

Clint Smith

UNC Asheville will welcome award-winning author and journalist Clint Smith for the annual commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Wednesday, January 18, at 7 p.m. in Lipinsky Auditorium. Smith’s keynote address, Our History, Reimagined, is free and open to the public. No advanced registration or tickets are required.

Smith will explore Civil Rights movements over the decades, as well as how memorials tie into our perceptions and collective memories of these eras. He approaches the audience to consider complicated truths about the United States, the country we live in, and ruminate on how this history has shaped the contemporary social, political, and cultural landscape of our world today.

Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a number one New York Times Bestseller and a 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for Nonfiction. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.

Outside of his work as a writer, Smith is the host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History. His two TED Talks, “The Danger of Silence” and “How to Raise a Black Son in America,” collectively have been viewed more than 9 million times.

For more information, visit unca.edu/events.

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