An Imagined Encounter: Langston Hughes and Xavier Villaurrutia

• Friday, September 14
• 2:00 PM
• Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Rm 38
• 121 Wall Street
• MAP
• FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

In “Blues,” one of the final stories in Counternarratives, John Keene imagines a one-night stand between Langston Hughes and the Mexican poet Xavier Villaurrutia. Beinecke curator Melissa Barton talks with Keene about his story in the presence of materials from the the library's extensive Harlem Renaissance holdings.

Melissa Barton is Curator of Drama and Prose for the Yale Collection of American Literature at Beinecke Library, which includes the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters. Melissa curated Beinecke’s 2017 building-wide exhibition “Gather Out of Star-Dust: The Harlem Renaissance and The Beinecke Library” and wrote the companion volume Gather Out of Star-Dust: A Harlem Renaissance Album. She teaches the Yale undergraduate seminar “African American Literature in the Archives” at Beinecke. Melissa earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago.

Co-sponsor: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library