The Center for Fiction and TCG Present Playwrights Jackie Sibblies Drury & Claudia Rankine In Conversation

The Center for Fiction, a 200-year-old literary nonprofit that's created an immersive home for readers and writers in downtown Brooklyn, and Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, will co-present Black Lives/White Gaze: Playwrights Jackie Sibblies Drury and Claudia Rankine in Conversation.

Jackie Sibblies Drury's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fairview, investigates race through the lens of surveillance: Who is watching whom and what effect does that have on the observed? Claudia Rankine's first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible? Join us for a conversation where these questions and more are investigated by two of the most provocative and exciting writers working today.

"TCG Books was founded on the conviction that plays are literature and worthy of the same resources, respect, and critical attention as any other form," said Teresa Eyring, executive director, TCG. "This event embodies the truth of that conviction by pairing one of our field's groundbreaking playwrights with a poet and activist of great renown. That their conversation centers on one of the most urgent issues of our time only makes this inaugural collaboration with the Center for Fiction that much more exciting."

The event will take place at the Center for Fiction 15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217 on Tuesday, October 29, 2019 at 7pm. Admission is $25.00. Learn more and acquire your tickets here.

Since its founding in 1984, TCG Books has grown to become North America's largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 17 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama on the TCG booklist. Under the leadership of publisher Terry Nemeth, TCG Books has published the work of more than 235 playwrights and other theatre professionals in single volumes and anthologies and sold over three million books. TCG Books has a dual objective: to bring new literary voices to public attention and to cultivate individual relationships with its playwrights that nurture their careers. TCG is committed to keeping its playwrights in print.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays include Fairview (Pulitzer Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Marys Seacole (OBIE Award); We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915; Really; and Social Creatures. Sibblies Drury's plays have been presented by New York City Players and Abrons Arts Center, Soho Rep., Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Available Light, Company One and The Bush Theatre in London, among others. Her work has been developed at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, A.C.T., the Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, Magic Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. Sibblies Drury was a dramaturg for Futurity by César Alvarez and The Lisps; Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company and Toshiki Okada; and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received a 2015 Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama, a 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a 2015 United States Artists Gracie Fellow.

Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don't Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater) was published with Graywolf Press in 2019, and Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; as well as numerous video collaborations. Her next publication, Just Us, is a collection of essays forthcoming with Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, she co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.