2020-Present
AUGUST WILSON AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER PRESENTS:
LIT Friday with Host & Curator Jessica Lanay
2024 LIT Friday Conversations
2020-2023 LIT Friday Conversations
AS OF JUNE 2020
Jessica Lanay is serving at the Literary Curator of the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. As part of her relationship with this illustrious institution, Jessica Lanay curates and hosts the LIT Friday digital program on the final Friday of each month. Find her LIT Friday conversations here.
Thus far she has interviewed multi and interdisciplinary artist and poet Vanessa German and poet Yona Harvey, non-fiction writer Damon Young and Pittsburgh Steeler’s Defensive Tackle Cam Heyward, Man Booker Prize Winner Bernardine Evaristo, poet and queer of color theorist Jari Bradley and photographer Mikael Owunna, playwright and director George C. Wolfe and director and writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and visual artist Dr. Fahamu Pecou and writer and producer Nelson George.
2020
JULY 11, 2020
I CAME BY BOAT SO MEET ME AT THE BEACH CLOSING PERFORMANCE: A(WAKE)NING WITH TSEDAYE MAKOKKEN, AYANA EVANS,
and DOMINIQUE DUROSEAU
Closing conversation moderated by Jessica Lanay
2019
Seeing Color in Action: Artist Talk with Amani Lewis, Murjoni Merriweather, and Jo Nanajian.
Moderated by Jessica Lanay
August Wilson African American Cultural Center
Association of Writers and Writing Programs, March 28, 2019
“What’s Craft Got to Do With It: On Craft, Race, and the Black Imagination”
Featuring Dianca London, Isabel Fernandez, Jessica Lanay,
2018
Association of Writers and Writing Programs, March 8, 2018
“Avoiding the Sunken Place: On Blackness, Selfhood, and the MFA”
Moderated by Dianca London; Featuring Jessica Lanay, Tara Betts, Yahdon Israel, and Dennis Norris II
Northeastern Modern Language Association; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. April 12.
Presentation by Jessica Lanay: “Homer’s Map of Africa and the Monstrous Feminine Other.”
2017
Kristeva Circle Conference; University of Pittsburgh. October 27.
“Extra-Linguistic, Extra-Human: Kristevan Melancholia, Semiotics, and Moten's Nothing”
Conference Paper
20/20 The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Carnegie Museum of Art
“This Does Not Mean Anything: A Lecture on Meleko Mokgosi’s Wall of Casbah”
Lecture by Jessica Lanay
20/20 The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Carnegie Museum of Art
“Dislocating the Jaw: A Lecture on the Sculpture of Melvin Edwards”
Lecture by Jessica Lanay
2012
NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond curated by Jessica Lanay
Public Programming
CSPAN BOOKTV | Tanner Colby Interviewed by Jessica Lanay
about book, Some of My Best Friends Are Black