Black Authors Festival Returns to Sag Harbor for Second Year With Impressive Lineup

For Darlene Williams and Verdel Jones, creating the Black Authors Festival — which will return to Sag Harbor on Saturday, August 3, for a second year — was about so much more than just gathering a group of Black writers together for book discussions and meet-and-greets.

Williams describes it as “a party with a purpose.”

The purpose: Encouraging, supporting and inspiring the next generation of Black writers, and fostering a love of learning, and reading in particular, in the Black community.

“We want young Black kids to know that it’s not a negative thing to be smart, and to know how to read, and read well,” Williams said in an interview in June. “We want them to write their own stories.”

She pointed out that too often history is told by only one group of people, and in putting together an event like the Black Authors Festival, she and Jones want to be part of the effort to turn that tide.

The festival, hosted at Breakwater Yacht Club in Sag Harbor, will feature something for everyone when it comes to genres and styles of writing.

This year’s honorees include Dr. Jennifer Morgan, professor of history at New York University; TV talk show host and journalist Tamron Hall; the Reverend Dr. Lakeesha Walrond, president of the New York Theological Seminary; attorney/speaker/entrepreneur Joseph Holland; award-winning chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson; Ralph McDaniels, founder and curator of Video Music Box and a hip-hop icon; and Dr. Zebulon Miletsky, associate professor of Africana Studies at Stony Brook University.

When it comes to choosing the attendees, Jones and Williams have a process. “We want to highlight people who have certain qualities we think are important,” Jones said. “Community activists, historians, educators, people in the media — people who are making an impact.”

Morgan is a professor of history in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is the author of “Reckoning With Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic” (Duke University Press, 2021), which won the Mary Nickliss Prize in Women’s and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians, and the Frederick Douglass Prize awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. She also wrote “Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in the Making of New World Slavery” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). She is the co-editor of “Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in America” (University of Illinois Press, 2016). Her research examines the intersections of gender and race in the early modern Black Atlantic.

Hall is an Emmy Award-winning television host and executive producer of the second-longest-running ABC Disney-produced syndicated talk show, “Tamron Hall,” and a bestselling author and mother. Hall’s extensive resume also includes hosting “Deadline: Crime With Tamron Hall” on Investigation Discovery, “TODAY” and “MSNBC Live With Tamron Hall.”

She received the 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for her segment on domestic violence as part of “TODAY’s Shine a Light” series. In 2022, Hall debuted her crime-fiction novel “As the Wicked Watch.” In March, she released her second book, “Watch Where They Hide,” the second book in the Jordan Manning series. She also is an outspoken advocate for shedding light on domestic abuse.

Samuelsson is the renowned chef behind many restaurants worldwide. He was the youngest person to receive a three-star review from The New York Times and was the guest chef for the Obama administration’s first state dinner.

He has won eight James Beard Foundation Awards and recently won a 2023 Emmy Award for the Short Form Program “My Mark.” Samuelsson hosted the critically acclaimed “No Passport Required” on PBS. He is the author of several cookbooks, The New York Times bestselling “Yes, Chef: A Memoir,” and his latest book, “The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food.” Samuelsson has won numerous competition shows, including “Top Chef Masters” and “Chopped All-Stars” and appears regularly on those franchises as a judge.

McDaniels has directed and produced over 400 music videos: Wu-Tang Clan, “C.R.E.A.M” (1993); Nas, “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” (1994); and Roxanne Shanté, “Roxanne-Roxanne” (1995), to name a few. He also co-produced two feature films, including “Juice” (1992), “Roxanne Roxanne” (Netflix, 2018) and countless documentaries.

He is the founder and curator of the Video Music Box Collection Inc. and has been instrumental in documenting the evolution of hip-hop culture. McDaniels, affectionately known as “Uncle Ralph,” through Video Music Box, has played an integral role within the community of hip-hop, which positions him as a unique preservationist with historic memory.

Miletsky is an associate professor in the Department of Africana Studies and History at Stony Brook University, specializing in recent African American history, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, urban history, mixed race, and biracial identity.

In addition to his earlier work on mixed race, Miletsky’s major project has been the Boston School Desegregation Crisis and the parent-led civil rights movement in Boston. His book “Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle” was published by the University of North Carolina Press in December 2022.

Dr. Walrond has dedicated her life to empowering women and children to live the best life possible. As a child, she endured molestation, abuse and patriarchy, which led her to be passionate about providing empowering resources for children and women.

She launched the “Getting to Greatness Women’s Conference” in 2013, which puts together retreats, workshops and panel discussions promoting women’s empowerment, leadership development, spiritual wellness, and mental and psychological wholeness.

She is the author of the “Let’s Talk About It” series, which is focused on empowering children with the tools they need to stay safe and bring attention to necessary conversations about child safety that must be held between children and the adults who love them.

Holland is a writer, attorney, entrepreneur, civic leader and ordained minister with over 40 years of experience serving the community. He was an All-American football player while at Cornell University and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard. Holland has written two professionally produced stage plays as well as six books, including the 2023 publication “Make Your Own History: Timeless Truths From Black American Trailblazers” (josephholland.com/make-your-own-history).

​Holland has served in government in several capacities, including director and general counsel to the New York State Senate Housing Committee, as well as New York State housing commissioner, where he managed over 1,500 employees.

There will be plenty for children to do as well. Special guest Mimi Dixon is the manager of brand activation and equity at Crayola, who launched the “Colors of the World,” a collection of 24 crayons that represent more than 40 different global skin tones. There will be coloring and reading activities for kids in the “kids’ corner” at the festival.

​Williams and Jones turned out to be a dynamic duo when it came to putting the festival together, and bringing in the kind of talent that will grace the Breakwater Yacht Club on August 3. They agreed that they have a kind of yin-yang dynamic that has served them well.

They both grew up in the Central Islip area, and while they were aware of each other, they didn’t run in the same immediate circle. But they had plenty in common, including a love of books and reading, a strong work ethic, and a desire to uplift Black authors and creators.

“I’ve always been a bookaholic, ever since I was a kid,” Williams said. “I don’t know where it comes from. I’ve always loved reading. It took me to places I could not go.”

Williams eventually became a published author and has written several books, including an anti-bullying and empowerment book for young girls, and other self-help books based on her work as a personal and professional development coach. She is the founder of The Higher Level Method LLC. She describes herself as a “serial entrepreneur, speaker and transformational coach.”

Her energy and enthusiasm come through clearly when she speaks about the authors festival and what inspired her and Jones to create it.

Jones, like Williams, has a multifaceted career She is the director of guidance and support services in the Plainedge School District, and she’s also an author and business owner as well as the host of two popular TV shows, “Conversations With Verdel Jones” and “Let’s Kick It With the Joneses.”

Bringing together a diverse group of Black authors who have a lot to say about a wide range of topics, from children’s writers to nonfiction writers, cookbook authors, wellness experts and more, is a big goal, but Williams and Jones have also been intent from the start on using the festival to help promote literacy, particularly among Black children.

They hosted a pre-event at Malloy College earlier this year, a panel discussion where the topic was literacy and the science of reading. Those in attendance shared thoughts and ideas about the difficulties and challenges in teaching children to read, and how they can be combated, and particularly how they create excitement and enthusiasm around reading for the next generation.

“One thing I know, as an educator and a parent, is that illiteracy in America is an atrocity,” Williams said. “We’re supposed to be a superpower, but we can’t teach kids to read, and particularly Black kids.”

Both Williams and Jones spoke about how crucial it is for the younger generation to have highly visible role models and mentors in the literary world.

“When they see people who look like them accomplishing things, it means a lot,” Williams said. As the first generation of her family to attend college, she said she understands this firsthand. “When you’re a trailblazer, there’s so much that you don’t know and you have so many questions to ask.”

Putting together an annual event like the Black Authors Festival can help provide a kind of blueprint for aspiring Black writers, and show them, quite literally, that achieving best-selling success is possible.

McDaniels summed up, in clear terms, why it’s important for him to attend an event like the Black Authors Festival.

“Many books have been banned in 2024,” he said. “It’s very important to keep all our words published and available.”

Jones and Williams said choosing Sag Harbor as the venue last year was a no-brainer. The village’s history as a summer haven for many Black people in the mid- and late 20th century, during a time of redlining and intense segregation, and its history as place of refuge for so many great writers, Black and white, from Langston Hughes to John Steinbeck, made it a perfect choice.

Williams and Jones joined forces with Dr. Georgette Grier-Key, the executive director of Sag Harbor’s Eastville Community Historical Society, a nonprofit organization that has preserved and documented the history of the Black and Indigenous people who lived and worked in the area. Dr. Key and the nonprofit have helped promote and organize the festival, and it’s a partnership they are happy to have created.

Both Williams and Jones said they believed the festival would be a success but admitted they were pleasantly surprised by just how fast it has grown. They have a clear vision for what they’d like the festival to become, and what they hope its legacy will be.

“We want to be the start of change, and that’s what the Black Authors Festival is all about,” Williams said. “We want to debunk illiteracy in the Black community. We want to debunk the banning of books and Black books. And particularly for Black people, because if you’re telling me I can’t write a book or read a book, you are threatening my First Amendment rights — which now means you’re reverting me back to slavery. Not on my watch.”

She added that the festival, at its core, is about “imagery, and about debunking, annihilating and eradicating the ills that exist to hold back Black people.”

For Williams and Jones, their legacy will be creating the festival and setting that tone. Their long-term hope is to hand it over to a new generation one day, but still enjoy the fruits of their labor.

“Darlene always says she pictures us in our 80s going to the festival,” Jones said. “Others will be working it, but this will be the legacy, that we were able to impact literacy and individuals penning their own books and telling our stories. And everybody will know that the Black Authors Festival at Sag Harbor is an important piece of our history.”

For more information about the festival, visit blackauthorsfestival.com.