Kiese Laymon '98, celebrated essayist and novelist, will be visiting Oberlin’s campus next Monday, September 11 to read from his forthcoming memoir, “Heavy: An American Memoir."
Laymon's work has sought to think through the relationships between race, racism, trauma, and the embodied manifestations of violence and grief in the black community.
Laymon, a black writer from Mississippi, earned an MFA in fiction from Indiana University and is currently a professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa for fall 2017. Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, the UK edition released in 2016. Laymon has written essays, stories and reviews for numerous publications including Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Colorlines, NPR, LitHub, theLos Angeles Times, the Guardian, PEN Journal, Oxford American, the Best American Series, Ebony, and Guernica. His book, Heavy: An American Memoir, will be released this fall. This event is free and open to the public. To learn more about this event, visit: https://www.oberlin.edu/events/%E2%80%9Cheavy-american-memoir-reading-kiese-laymon-%E2%80%9998.