Welcome to episode two of Fulbright Conversations: Global Challenges! In this episode, our podcast host Sam Thompson is joined by Fulbrighters Ade Solanke and Thomas Glave as they take a transatlantic approach to exploring Storytelling and Racial Justice.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

Thomas’ time in Nottingham, UK researching Black cultural identity and the history of Black people in the East Midlands
Ade’s work in Boston developing her play ‘Phillis in London’, which explores Phillis Wheatley, the African-American enslaved teenage prodigy who in 1773 published the first book in English by an African
Their perspectives on the intersections between the UK, the US, Africa and the Caribbean and how this has translated through their work in storytelling
How the arts can be used as a means of resistance as well as a positive force for driving collective action
How their experiences have shaped their optimism for the future

About our speakers

Adeola Solanke is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter and the founder of Spora stories, telling the stories of the African diaspora. Her plays include her acclaimed debut Pandora's Box, which won a best New Play nomination in London's off West End Theatre Awards and were shortlisted for the $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa's largest literary award.

A double Fulbrighter, she is a 2022-2023 Fulbright All Disciplines Scholar awardee based at Emerson College and was formerly a Fulbright Fellow, Phi Beta Kappa International scholar and Association of American University women's scholar at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she earned an MFA from the School of Cinematic Arts.

Thomas Glave is the author of four books and editor of the Anthology Our Caribbean Gathering of lesbian and gay writing from the Caribbean.

He's been the Martin Luther King junior visiting professor at MIT, Leverhulme visiting professor at the University of Warwick, and a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. He serves on the editorial boards of Transition and Wasafiri, and is a trustee of writing West Midlands and People Tree Press. His most recent work appears in the White Review and Latin American literary.

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