Celebrating the Release

of
Ted Wilson's Slo' Dance

with an Introduction by Amiri Baraka

Shamal Books GPO Box 16, NYC 10116 (718) 622 4426 or (973) 763 9550

email contacts: Louisreyesrivera@aol.com  tedlwilson@att.net  Shamalbooks@aol.com

          Veteran writer/activist Ted Wilson celebrates the publication of his poetry and prose with an initial series of booksignings in and around New York City. While the book, Slo' Dance (Shamal Books, 2003), is his first full length collection, Mr. Wilson is no newcomer to New York's literary circles. A third generation native of Harlem, Wilson began his creative and activist career during the 1960s Black Arts Movement, developing alongside such literary figures as Henry Dumas, Larry Neal, Askia Muhammad Toure, Sonia Sanchez, and Amiri Baraka, whose introduction to Slo' Dance takes note of Wilson's contributory role "as an active and conscious player in that revolutionary motion."

          Commenting on the work, internationally acclaimed poet Jayne Cortez describes Slo' Dance as "...the result of a forty-year search for a sense of understanding the racial experience in urban America."

          "His words inform, infuse our lives with precision and politics and love," adds the venerable Sonia Sanchez.

          A former co-editor for Liberator and founder of Pride, two of the lead magazines for that era's budding writers, Wilson was first anthologized in the 1968 release of Black Fire (Neal, Baraka).

          With a literary-activist career spanning four decades, he has remained among the several stalwart cultural workers on behalf of a U.S.-Pan African arts community, producing numerous community cultural events and reading series, while continuously contributing to reputable journals and anthologies, among them, Black American Literature Forum, African Voices, Callaloo, New Rain, and in the relatively recent award-winners Bum Rush The Page, and In Defense of Mumia, to name a few.

          The first of three local booksigning parties for Slo' Dance appropriately kicks off in Harlem on Thursday, June 12, at Hue-Man Books, 2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd., near 125th Street, beginning at 6pm.
          This will be followed by a reading on Saturday, June 14, at lower Manhattan's Lafayette Grill & Bar, at 54 Franklin Street, near Broadway, starting at 3pm and hosted by SPIN, the Africana Heritage Caucus of the National Writers Union, New York local.

          The third reading takes place on Sunday, June 15, at the Afrikan Poetry Theater, located at 176-03 Jamaica Avenue (near 176th St.), in Queens, also starting at 3pm, and hosted by John Watusi Branch.

Source: Ted Wilson. Slo' Dance. Brooklyn, NY: Shamal Books, 2003 / Contact: Shamal Books, GPO Box 16, NYC 10116 (718) 622 4426 (Shamalbooks@aol.com)  For further information, contact Ted Wilson at (973) 763 9550.

Ted Wilson, formerly with Pride and Liberator magazines,  is a writer, producer, and promoter, most recently with the Bread Is Rising poetry series in New York City. A cultural worker since the 1960s Black Liberation/human rights movements, Ted's writings have appeared in several journals: The Black Nation; Black American Literature Forum; Callaloo; NOBO: Journal of African American Thought; and anthologies: Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch (ed. J.E. Gwynne); In Defense of Mumia (eds. S.E. Anderson, T. Medina); Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing  (eds. L. Jones, L. Neal); New Rain #9: Our Fathers/Ourselves (eds. G. Johnston, M. M'Buzi Moore)]. He also works as a Construction Manager Consultant and Developer currently involved in an effort to develop a Cultural/Arts district in Newark, New Jersey.

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update 4 August 2008