Fiction Reading: Tara Betts, Angie Chatman, Camille Forbes

Write On is pleased to present a reading by three Kimbilio Fellows, currently in residence at Write On: Tara Betts, Angie Chatman, and Camille Forbes. The reading is free and open to all but registration is required as seating is limited. A light reception follows the reading.

Kimbilio® means “safe haven” in Swahili. We are a community of writers and scholars committed to developing, empowering and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora and their stories.  Projects include readings, presentations at professional conferences, social media networking, book prizes, and an annual summer retreat for fiction writers who are members of the Kimbilio community. Write On is proud to partner with them, offering up to three fellows a one-week residency at our campus.

Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. She was the inaugural Poet for the People at University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and the Pozen Center. She is currently the Professor of Practice and Poet in Residence at DePaul University’s Peace, Conflict Studies, and Social Justice Program. Tara also co-edited The Beiging of America: Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, a new edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler’s memoir Adventures in Black and White, and Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. In addition to writing new fiction, she is working on poems for her second collection with Peggy Choy Dance Company and co-editing an anthology of Bop Poems with Affa M. Weaver.

Angie Chatman is a freelance writer and storyteller. Her short stories and essays can be found in Taint, Taint, Taint Magazine, Brevity, Literary Landscapes, The Rumpus, Pangyrus, Hippocampus Magazine, Blood Orange Review, fwriction:review, and elsewhere. She has told on The Moth Radio Hour episode “Help Me” and won a WEBBY award for telling on GBH/World Channel’s Stories from the Stage episode “Growing Up Black.” In 2021, Angie was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay, “Ode to Poundcake.” An engineer by degree, Angie earned an MBA from MIT-Sloan and an MFA in fiction and creative nonfiction from Queens University in Charolette. In addition to being a Kimbilio Fellow, she has recevied runding from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2020), Ragdale (2021) and the Massachusetts Cultural Arts Council (2023). Born and raised on Chicago’s southside, Angie now lives in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston with her family, including rescue dog, Lizzie.

Camille F. Forbes is a scholar and storyteller who hold an MA in History and a PhD in American Civilization from Harvard University. She is the author of Introducing Bert Williams: Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America’s First Black Star, a critical biography reassessing the illustrious career of the misunderstood nineteenth-century Afro-Caribbean blackface comedian. A former Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and Hambidge fellow, Camille has been published in Callaloo and Obsidian and her fiction has been selected for The Best Peace Fiction social justice anthology. Her current project, Minding the Territory, is a novel set during the Civil War period that traces the fortunes and misfortunes of a young enslaved woman. Camille is an associate professor in the literature department at the University of California, San Diego.