Arts & Humanities

Author of Young-Adult Books Focuses on Civil Rights Era in USU Presentation

Author Chris Crowe will be on the USU campus Friday, Oct. 28, at the Merrill-Cazier Library.

An award-winning young-adult writer who brings alive the Civil Rights era will speak Friday, Oct. 28, in Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library.

Chris Crowe, author of such books as Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case, will speak as part of the Department of English Speaker Series. The event is also part of the Utah Humanities’ Book Festival. Crowe’s topics are:

12:30 p.m.: “Civil Rights and Young Adult Literature.”

1:30 p.m.: “Writing for Young Adults,” which Joyce Kinkead, professor of English, described as a “craft talk.”

In this era of the Black Lives Matter and growing awareness of police violence, “This lecture could not be more timely,” said Kinkead.

Both lectures will be in LIB101.

Crowe, professor of English at Brigham Young University, is the author of several books, most notably Mississippi Trial, 1955 which won several awards, including the 2003 International Reading Association’s Young Adult Novel Award. In addition to his book on Emmett Till, other of his nonfiction books include a young adult-targeted biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Crowe’s most recent book is Death Comes Up the Hill about a teenager dealing with the turmoil of 1968, a year that saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the escalation of the Vietnam War. The 2014 novel was named to the 2015 Best Fiction for Young Adults list by the American Library Association.

Related links:

Information: Joyce Kinkead, joyce.kinkead@usu.edu

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