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Michael Eric Dyson book launch: Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote

Join us on Tuesday, September 17, at the Fitler Club Ballroom starting at 5pm for the launch of the new young adult book by thought leader and bestselling author Rev. Michael Eric Dyson, Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote.

One of the most important and least understood true stories of our nation, the fight for representation is an ongoing and epic quest to build the democracy sketched out in the Constitution but unfinished in the 21st century. Co-authored by celebrated writer Marc Favreau, Represent is a dramatic exploration of the story of voting rights in the United States, from the American Revolution up to the present day.

Dyson — a professor, author of 25 books and winner of several awards — will bring his wit, wisdom and fiery calls to action to a conversation befitting adults, teenagers and anyone passionate about American democracy and the upcoming presidential election.

The event will also feature a civic engagement fair, offering ways to help with and get out the vote in November. Teenagers and young adults are encouraged to attend. Complimentary drinks will be available for guests to enjoy.

$5 for entry. $20 for book pre-order. $5 off entry for Philadelphia Citizen and Fitler Club members. Free entry to people under 18 years old.

RSVP HERE

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Eliza Griswold and The Philadelphia Citizen

 

Recap

Eliza Griswold Book Launch

The New Yorker writer shared her personal journey to authoring Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church — among many audience members who lived the story

Recap

Eliza Griswold Book Launch

The New Yorker writer shared her personal journey to authoring Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church — among many audience members who lived the story

Events at the Philadelphia Citizen pretty much always draw smart, civically engaged audiences. Monday’s audience for The Citizen’s book signing event with Pulitzer Prize winner and New Yorker writer (and poet! and translator!) Eliza Griswold, however, outdid itself. The 150-plus people who came to hear and speak with the author about her new, Philadelphia-based work of nonfiction, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, was next level engaged.

Griswold, who this month became Princeton University’s director of the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism, specializes in covering politics, the environment and religion. Her book began as an effort to cover a “radical evangelical” church, a sort of left wing of Christianity whose believers are more concerned with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” etc.) than with politics of the moment. She landed on Circle of Hope — “a happy community of Jesus loving people who really lived their beliefs, in the street,” she said, “a quirky subculture” — not just at a time when American evangelicalism had taken on a whole new identity, but also at the start of the radical congregation’s existential crisis.

Former and current Circle of Hope congregants were among the audience members. So were members of Griswold’s late father’s Episcopal faith community, journalists and city leaders, including City Councilmember At-Large Nicolas O’Rourke, whose efforts to transform Black men who’d planned to vote for Trump to instead vote for Harris Griswold recently wrote about in the New Yorker.

Below, check out some photos and the video of the event.

VIDEO OF THE FULL EVENT

 

PHOTOS FROM ELIZA GRISWOLD BOOK SIGNING

Left to right: Katie Friedland, Daphne Fifield and John Fifield.
Left to right: David Krupnick, Julien Friedland and Jason Friedland.
Left to right: John Londres, Kris Eden, Stevie Neale, Scott Shannon, Jen Shannon, Ashley Martin, Casey Bien-Aime and Vladimir Bien-Aime.
Audience members.
The scene from the audience.
Casey Bien-Aime asks a question. Larry Platt holds the microphone.
Roxanne Patel Shepelavy (left) and Eliza Griswold, onstage.
Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church on display courtesy of Head House Books.
The book signing line.
Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church on display courtesy of Head House Books.

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