Please join us for our third installment of our Southern Literary Salon Series during our 14th season: Amongst the Stars of Jesmyn Ward on the Tabor Stage on Sunday, March 27 at 3:00 pm. Ward, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, is the only woman to win the National Book Award twice.
Generously sponsored by Independent Bank, Amongst the Stars, which will run for approximately one hour without intermission, is curated and directed by TSC’s Stephanie Shine.
The young cast of TSC-trained actors includes Eboni Cain, Pershon Harper, Riaaz Phillips, Rocky Turnage, and Carrisa Thompson reading and performing from Ward’s works, including Men We Reaped: A Memoir, Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, and Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Jesmyn Ward, who lives in Mississippi, received her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. Her novels Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing won the 2011 and 2017 National Book Awards. She is also the author of the anthology The Fire This Time. Her memoir Men We Reaped was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008-2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renee Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010-11 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award.
As Ward writes in her memoir: “I knew the boys in my first novel, which I was writing at that time, weren’t as raw as they could be, weren’t real. I knew they were failing as characters because I wasn’t pushing them to assume the reality that my real-life boys experienced every day. I loved them too much: as an author, I was a benevolent God. I protected them from death, from drug addiction, from needlessly harsh sentences in jail for doing stupid, juvenile things like stealing four-wheel ATVs. All of the young Black men in my life, in my community, had been prey to these things in real life, and yet in the lives I imagined for them, I avoided the truth. I couldn’t figure out how to love my characters less. How to be an Old Testament God.”
Box Office Information
Purchase tickets now and receive more information by calling TSC’s Box Office at (901) 759-0604 or going online here.
TSC’s Tabor Stage is located at 7950 Trinity Road, Memphis, TN 38018-6297.
Tickets range from $15-$27, including tiered seating tickets for Seniors (age 62+) ranging from $20-$24 and tiered seating tickets for Students (age +/-22, with identification) ranging from $15-$20.
No refunds/exchanges. House opens 30 minutes prior to curtain for purchase of specialty Salon cocktail. Credit Card charges require a $1 per-ticket fee. Cast/schedule subject to change with notice. Free parking and covered drop-off area.
Season 14 Sponsors and Partners
TSC’s generous sponsors of its season, productions, and Education and Outreach Program include FedEx, International Paper, the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, ArtsMemphis, Tennessee Arts Commission, Independent Bank, Evans|Petree, P.C., First Horizon Foundation through an ArtsFirst grant, AutoZone, Campbell Clinic, the family of Pat and Ernest Kelly, The Sims Family Charitable Trust, Nancy R. Copp, the Jack Jones Children’s Literacy Fund, the family of Owen and Margaret Wellford Tabor, the Barbara B. Apperson Angel Fund, the Dunbar Abston Fund for Sustainable Excellence, Anne and Michael Keeney, Irene and Fred Smith, and the Memphis City Council. TSC’s season is funded under a Grant Contract with the State of Tennessee.
TSC’s programming and outreach partners include University of Memphis’ Department of Theatre & Dance, Shelby County Schools, Collierville Municipal School District, Memphis Juvenile Justice System, the Memphis V.A. Hospital, Cities of Bartlett/Collierville/Germantown/Lakeland/Memphis, and the Benjamin Hooks Public Library Friends.
