OCC ANNUAL PUBLIC LECTURE

On Sunday, March 20, 2022, we welcomed

Natalie Baszile

author of

We Are Each Other’s Harvest : Celebrating African American FArmers, Land, and Legacy

Natalie Baszile is the author of Queen Sugar, which has been turned into a television series on the Oprah Winfrey Network produced by Ava DuVernay.  Baszile is also the editor of We Are Each Other's Harvest which is a collection of essays, interviews, photographs, and poems about Black American farmers.

Natalie Baszile graduated from UCLA with an M.A. in Afro-American Studies and has an MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She started writing what became Queen Sugar in the 1990s, exploring an African-American-themed tale of endurance and hope in the American South. She worked on the text for ten years. Baszile attended a women writer's retreat in Hedgebrook where she read part of a chapter from Queen Sugar to the group. From that came the opportunity to have her story made into a series on the Oprah NETWORK

In the coming weeks, let’s get ready! You can start by WATCHING THIS VIDEO to hear Baszile discussing her anthology about black farmers in the United States, We Are Each Other’s Harvest.