Join longtime activist, scholar of African American studies, and friend of the Bureau James Wright for a discussion of FIRE!! and the Young Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1926, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, and John P. Davis created the first and only issue of the black literary journal FIRE!!, which included Nugent’s explicitly gay poem “Smoke, Lilies and Jade.” Wright will discuss FIRE!! in the context of the Harlem Renaissance, and we will screen Brother to Brother (2005, written and directed by Rodney Evans, 90 minutes), a dramatic film about the life and times of Bruce Nugent.

James Wright has organized events at the Bureau exploring the lives and works of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry. Refreshments will be served and materials relating to FIRE!! and Bruce Nugent will be distributed at the event.