Jerald Walker's recent How to Make a Slave and Other Essays was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award. A ''restless, brilliant'' collection that ''can alight on a truth without pinning it in place'' (New York Times), it examines such wide-ranging topics as the medical establishment's racial biases, the burden of cultural stereotypes, and other elements that speak to what it means to be a Black American male in this charged moment. A creative writing professor at Emerson College and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Walker is also the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption; and The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult.

(recorded 12/9/2020)