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Gathering of the Groups

National Book Award Winner Nate Powell

Gathering of the Groups welcomes National Book Award winner Nate Powell to discuss the "March" trilogy, which illustrates the struggles Congressman John Lewis faced during the Civil Rights Movement.

Little Rock native Nate Powell will join KUAF's Kyle Kellams for Fayetteville Public Library's annual Gathering of the Groups, which invites book clubs across Northwest Arkansas to focus attention on important themes and then share in a discussion with the author.

Nate Powell will be discussing his graphic memoir "March", which won the 2016 National Book Award and made him the first cartoonist to ever win the award. He shared the prize with Representative John Lewis and Andrew Aydin to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement through the eyes of Congressman John Lewis. From a very young age, John Lewis was involved in the fight for racial equality through non-violent action. As one of the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis was present at pivotal moments in the struggle for civil rights, including lunch-counter sit-ins, freedom rides, Mississippi Freedom Summer and the March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

This August, Powell continues the story of John Lewis in "Run", a new series that explores the struggles John Lewis faced after the Selma voting rights campaign.

“This worthy successor to the late Congressman Lewis’ "March" graphic memoir trilogy picks up in the civil rights leader’s life during the 1960s counterculture revolution…This living history gives faces and voices to the legends of the civil rights era and connects their struggles to the present; the police brutality, voter suppression tactics, and segregationist politics of the 1960s are not so different from those Lewis was still making “good trouble” against at the time of his death in 2020. Lewis’s stunning American story and legacy lives on in these pages.” ― Publishers Weekly STARRED Review

Biography:

Nate Powell began self-publishing at age 14 and graduated from School of Visual Arts in 2000.  In addition to the National Book Award, Powell’s work has also received a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, three Eisner Awards, two Ignatz Awards, four YALSA Great Graphic Novels For Teens selections, and two Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist selections.  His work includes a new graphic memoir/essay "Save It For Later", Eisner-nominated Ozark horror tale "Come Again", civil rights icon John Lewis' "March" trilogy, comics essay "About Face", "Two Dead", "Any Empire", "Swallow Me Whole", "The Silence Of Our Friends" and Rick Riordan’s "The Lost Hero".  Nate Powell has discussed his work at the United Nations, as well as on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, CNN, PBS and Free Speech TV.  

Registration is required for this event.  A book signing will follow the discussion.

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