LA PLUME — For the ninth consecutive year, Keystone College will host The Gathering from July 16-19 on campus. The Gathering is an annual three-day symposium on creativity and imagination with performances, lectures, discussions, and workshops. People from diverse backgrounds meet to explore the creative spirit that permeates literature, science, and the arts around the world.
This year’s event, “The Story: Exploring Personal Encounters with History” will focus on the intersections of personal lives and world events. One of the featured presenters will be Professor Anita Hill, best known for her riveting testimony in the 1991 Supreme Court nomination hearings for Clarence Thomas. She will discuss her book, “Speaking Truth to Power,” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 17 in the Theatre in Brooks, followed by a book signing at 9 p.m. Hill’s lecture will be available to all attendees of The Gathering at no extra charge. Individual admission for members of the communing is $25.
Hill is famous for her courageous stand during the Clarence Thomas nomination process. She is Professor of Law, Public Policy and Women’s Studies at Heller Graduate School of Policy and Management, Brandeis University. She is a respected advocate for equality and civil rights. In addition to “Speaking Truth to Power,” she is the author of “Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home.”
In addition to Hill, The Gathering will feature a variety of well-known personalities, including author and journalist Katherine Boo and award-winning poet Denver Butson.
Boo is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” which won the National Book Award in 2012. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post.
Denver Butson published three books of poetry, including illegible address, plus poems in several anthologies, and in literary journals, including Yale Review, Ontario Review and Caliban. His poems were featured several times on National Public Radio’s Writer’s Almanac and in the Library of Congress’s Poetry 180 program. Nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, Butson was a New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Fellow.
Other presenters for the event include poet, journalist and scholar Constance Garcia-Barrio; author Gina Nahai; musician and dancer Adwoa Badoe; Keystone professor Kerry Roe; Penn State Worthington-Scranton professor Philip Mosely and fitness and nutrition expert Donna Fetzko.
For additional information, registration and a complete schedule of events, call 570-561-5962.
