From staff reports
Penn Center’s York W. Baily Museum will be hosting a book talk and book signing for Meeting At The Table: African-American Women Write on Race, Culture and Community at 6:30 p.m., Saturday, March 23. The event is free and open to the public.
In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arber, and the worldwide protests that followed in 2020, the co-editors of Meeting At The Table created a project that would bring voices of African-American women together to honestly and transparently share how race and culture affected them in ways related to their families, their careers and their communities. The essays in Meeting At The Table will not only enlighten readers, but offer paths into the vital conversations across racial, cultural and community divides.
Co-editors Tina McElroy Ansa and Wanda Lloyd, friends for more than 50 years and also colleagues as journalists and authors, believe the 15 essays will inspire readers from diverse ages and backgrounds to create their own tables of conversations about race.
Lloyd – a journalist, professor, author and TEDx presenter – is a speaker on topics of journalism, media diversity and Black history. She was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Hall of Fame in 2019.
She is the author of Coming Full Circle: From Jim Crow to Journalism. The memoir is
a self-reflective exploration of the author’s life growing up in the Deep South and becoming a
trailblazing newspaper editor.
The foreword was written by novelist McElroy Ansa, best-selling author of five novels, including Baby of the Family and Ugly Ways. Coming Full Circle was listed by bookauthority.org as one of the “25 Best Journalism Books to Read in 2020.” Kirkus Reviews calls the memoir “Inspiring reading for aspiring journalists and students of civil rights.”
Lloyd served more than eight years as executive editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser. In this role, she was responsible for all news content for the daily newspaper, websites and several weekly newspapers. She is a former associate professor/chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Savannah State University. She has also been a columnist for the Savannah Morning News/savannahnow.com.
Lloyd was the founding executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, based on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. The Institute offered journalism training to people of color coming from careers outside of journalism and who were interested in a mid-career shift into journalism. In Nashville, she was also co-host of “Behind the Headlines,” a weekly radio news analysis show on WFSK-FM, the Fisk University station. Lloyd served as a senior editor at USA TODAY, where she served earlier as a deputy managing editor and managing editor. She was managing editor at The Greenville (S.C.) News, and she was an editor at The Washington Post, the Providence Evening Bulletin, the Miami Herald, and the Atlanta Journal. She has been a four-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize.
She is a former director of the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), where she chaired the organization’s committees on Diversity, Human Resources and Nominations, and she was co- editor of the “ASNE Bulletin” (later “The American Editor”). She was a co-founder and chair of the National Association of Minority Media Executives (NAMME), and she served as a member of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Board of Directors. She directed the landmark NABJ study Muted Voices: Frustration and Fear in the Newsroom, a survey of black journalists and newsroom managers.
Ansa is a novelist, publisher, filmmaker, teacher and journalist. But above all, she is a storyteller and cultural icon. She is at work on her sixth novel, From Now On, to be published by DownSouth Press, the independent publishing company Ms. Ansa established nearly a decade ago.
First Lady Michelle Obama quoted passages from Ansa’s first novel Baby Of The Family in her 2011 remarks at Spelman College’s commencement.
Later that summer, the writer was the recipient of the 2011 Bebe Moore Campbell Memorial Award from the National Book Club Conference. She has been awarded the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for her body and work and for contributions to the literary arts community of Georgia. Like many Southern writers, Ansa has filled her life with the word. In the fall of 2004, Ansa established the annual Sea Island Writers Retreats on Sapelo Island, Ga.
The annual retreats seek to assist emerging and established writers in honing their work and skills in fiction, non-fiction, memoir and editing in sessions with professional writers and editors.
Ansa has been a regular contributor to the award-winning television series CBS Sunday Morning with her essays, “Postcards from Georgia,” which were filmed on location on her beautiful Georgia Sea Island home of St. Simons Island.
Want To Go?
Who: Wanda Lloyd and Tina McElroy Ansa
What: A Book Talk and Signing for Meeting At The Table: African-American Women Write on Race,
Culture and Community
When: 6:30 p.m., Saturday, March 23
Where: The York W. Bailey Museum, Penn Center, 16 Penn Center Circle West, St. Helena Island
Cost: Free and open to the public
