Reading in an Age of Crisis with Garth Greenwell, Emily Bernard, and Kathryn Lofton

A roundtable discussion on the ethics of reading and reading publics with Garth Greenwell, novelist and critic; Emily Bernard, critic, editor, and Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont; and Kathryn Lofton, Lex Hixon Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies and Professor of History and Divinity at Yale University and FAS Dean of Humanities. Moderated by Meghan O'Rourke, author, poet, and editor of The Yale Review.

The event took place on April 5, 2023 at Yale University as part of The Yale Review’s Spring 2023 Literary Festival.

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University Scholar Lecture Series: “Lucille: A Life Story”

The Graduate College is pleased to present “Lucille: A Life Story,” a lecture by Emily Bernard, Ph.D, as part of the University of Vermont’s University Scholar Lecture Series.

Professor Emily Bernard discusses research for her upcoming book, Unfinished Women, an extended meditation on the dynamic between the expectations of traditional biographical writing and the lives of black women.

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Yale Review kicks off Spring Festival with Roundtable Discussion of “Reading in an Age of Crisis”

The discussion — which featured panelists Garth Greenwell, Emily Bernard, and Kathryn Lofton — explored public and private engagement with literature.

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Emily Bernard Reads from “Black is the Body” at Beinecke Library

Emily Bernard gave a reading at Yale University on Wednesday evening, giving insight into some of her most vulnerable, personal pieces.

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Vermont Made Episode 7: Wisdom Through Uncertainty with Essayist Emily Bernard

Acclaimed essayist Emily Bernard discusses life after her 2019 book Black is the Body, intimacy and the page, and her next project, a collection of essays about Black women artists in the public eye.

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Emily Bernard and literary luminaries return to Aspen

The acclaimed and popular essayist Emily Bernard has been working with the literary nonprofit Aspen Words for almost two years now, but has never before been to Aspen in-person.

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Musings of the Artist

Emily Bernard

In this wide-ranging conversation, Emily speaks on motherhood, fear, forgiveness, rejecting shame and staying true to who you are as an artist. We also dive deep into having “the blues” - and I truly think it was the most joyful conversation on depression I’ve ever had! Emily radiates kindness, and is just a remarkable person.

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NJCU Center for the Arts

Black is the Body

Moderated by Edvige Giunta and Meili Ellis-Tingle. Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Mother's Time and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio.

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Yellow Cup Podcast

60. Interracial couples and the N-word ft Emily Bernard

The pair discuss Emily surviving a stabbing and being an African-American woman married to a white man. They also touch on policing of the N-Word, experienced racism while needing emergency care and the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement. Listen to catch Emily's thoughts on whether Black-British actors should be playing African-American icons on screen.

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W Magazine

Read and Resist: W’s Daily Briefing for June 25th

“In this powerful essay, the writer Emily Bernard grapples with grief, fear and creativity in the face of the pandemic as she observes how her young daughters react to being home from school and seeing videos of police brutality on the internet.”

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The Herald

21 Books For 2021: Nick Major Previews The Year’s Most Exciting Releases

“The recent Black Lives Matter protests have highlighted the various forms of racism in Britain and abroad. Emily Bernard’s Black is the Body (Doubleday, February) is composed of 12 personal essays about her experiences as a black woman in America. She writes about growing up in the Deep South, being stabbed in a café in New Haven, marrying a white man and bringing him back to her family, and adopting two daughters from Ethiopia.”

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Capital Xtra Book Club

Black is the Body

Leah Davis talks to Emily Bernard about her beautifully honest book 'Black Is the Body'. Bernard opens up about race, motherhood, friendship and more in this series of deeply personal and powerful essays.

"Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of this book."

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New Statesman

Essential non-fiction books of 2021

“The American academic Emily Bernard’s Black is the Body (Transworld, February) is a series of first-person essays that capture “the twists and turns in the lives of three generations of black women”.

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Essence

The Ultimate Mother's Day Gift Guide For Every Type Of Black Mom

“For The Mom Full Of Wisdom: In a series of twelve exquisitely written essays, Emily Bernard examines the realities of growing up black in the South with a family name inherited from a white man.”

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Poets & Writers

Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

“With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books including Hark by Sam Lipstye and Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin.”

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VT Digger

Writer reflects on being black in a white state

When University of Vermont professor Emily Bernard talks about being black in the second whitest state in the nation, she often surprises people by starting with the positives.

“I bragged when Bernie Sanders, then a member of the House, called a meeting for people of color at a church in downtown Burlington purely to find out how we were faring,” the 51-year-old Nashville native recalls. “I called my parents to gloat when Vermont came in first on the nights of both elections that made Barack Obama president.”

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Book Riot

20 MUST-READ BEST ESSAY COLLECTIONS OF 2019

“Emily Bernard’s essays are about her experiences of race. She writes about life as a black woman in Vermont, her family’s history in Alabama and Nashville, her job as a professor who teaches African American literature, and her adoption of twin girls from Ethiopia. It begins with the story of a stabbing in New Haven and uses that as a springboard to write about what it means to live in a black body.”

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The Book Jam

3 Questions with Emily Bernard

“We are very excited to present this week’s “3 Questions” with the writer Emily Bernard. Professor Bernard was born and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and is now a Vermont resident. She received her PhD in American studies from Yale University. She has been the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the NEH, and a W. E. B. Du Bois Resident Fellowship at Harvard University. Her essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies; currently she is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont, where she has been a faculty member since 2001.”

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Family secrets

Dani Shapiro from “Family Secrets” sits down with Emily Bernard

“Emily Bernard never felt close to her judgmental, domineering father, who, for most of her life, denied he’d ever been unfaithful to her mother. It wasn’t until her dad’s sudden death that Emily began the process of getting to know the woman who caused her family so much pain: her father’s longtime mistress.”

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THE HUB

This is Karen Hunter: Full interview with Emily Bernard

Karen Hunter from “The Hub” interviews Emily Bernard about Black Is The Body. “It read like music,” Hunter said. “It is a master class in writing.”

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Black to our roots

Episode 19

Black to our Roots got the opportunity to interview Emily Bernard and talk about her amazing new book “Black is the Body.”

“When I get tired, I get frustrated, or I lose faith, [I come] back to that question: ‘What else can I do?’ There is no choice for me. It’s either speak or be silent, and the way I speak is here,” Bernard said. “Writing is how I understand the world, how I ask questions, how I love the world and love the people in it.”

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The american scholar: smarty pants

The Gray Edges of Blackness

Emily Bernard discusses the various motivators that drove her to compile the essays that make up Black Is The Body in this episode of The American Scholar’s “Smarty Pants.”

“I started to compose these essays thinking about the stories I didn’t see out there,” Bernard said. “I think the ambivalence about what a Black story should look like and should carry is what inspired me to write the book.” 

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NPR’s On PoinT

Emily Bernard's 'Black Is The Body' Examines 'Violent Encounter' Of U.S. Race Relations

With Meghna Chakrabarti. African-American writer Emily Bernard was stabbed by a white man. She tells the story of how it transformed her in the new memoir, "Black is the Body."

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VPR

Author Emily Bernard Explores Race And Personal History In 'Black Is The Body'

Emily Bernard has stories to tell. Some are hers and some were passed down by family members, but all of them connect in a deeply personal way to her sense of being as a black woman in America. The essays are collected in a new book called "Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine.”

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NPR

Georgetown Professor Maureen Corrigan reviews Black Is The Body on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”

“Even the best essay collections routinely contain some filler. But of the 12 essays here, there's not one that even comes close to being forgettable. Bernard's language is fresh, poetically compact and often witty,” Corrigan said.

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MPR News

MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with Bernard about the invitation her book offers and the complexity of being black in America today.

“Her new book is built on that kind of nuance. "Black is the Body" is a collection of first-person essays that explore vast themes like race, identity and trauma — through the personal details of her own life.” (MPR News).

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WRITE THE BOOK

Interview #552

Live, in-studio interview with Vermont author and UVM faculty member Emily Bernard about her new book, Black Is The Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine.

In this episode, Emily Bernard talks about the ways she has complicated conversations about race in the classroom and how these experiences affect the writing in Black Is The Body.

“Racism is a virus. A terrible pathology in our culture that is costing us every day in so many ways -- not only bodies but our very intelligence as a species. It just corrodes our humanity,” Bernard said. “So I feel like the classroom is where I can do some corrective work, if I may be so bold, but that’s what I’m trying to do. But it means we have to acknowledge the things we fear.”

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The Upside VT

Body of Work with Emily Bernard

Emily Bernard sits down with host Gin Ferrara about the intricacies of writing about family and speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.

“Part of what I love to do in my work is to remember people, and to give space to people who maybe don’t have that space,” Bernard said. “I think it comes from loving my mother and my grandmother, and thinking about all the ways they weren’t able to live in the world freely -- and because of the sacrifices they made, I can.”

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This is the Author

S4 E01: Dani Shapiro, Soniah Kamal, and Emily Bernard

In this episode, meet memoirist Dani Shapiro, author Soniah Kamal, and professor Emily Bernard. From fearless family memoirs to updating classic fiction to reflect her own culture, each of these authors’ works share deeply personal pieces of themselves.

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Emily Bernard: Creativity in Isolation

“We asked scholar, critic, and prize-winning essayist Emily Bernard what she has been thinking about, working on, and reading in this time of isolation and quarantine.”

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Emily Bernard in conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert

“Please enjoy my conversation with the brilliant and light-drenched Emily Bernard about her essay collection BLACK IS THE BODY. Emily: You are a treasure, and I love you very much. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and grace with a broken, yearning world.” -Elizabeth Gilbert

Yale Public Humanities “Democracy in America” series

Acclaimed author, Emily Bernard, reads from her book of essays, Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine (2019) at the Wilson Library (NHFPL) on January 21, 2020 as part of the Yale Public Humanities "Democracy in America" series.

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Today’s top 12 books to read this summer

Bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert recommends Black Is The Body on TODAY. “It’s about race, it’s about class but threaded within this is the story of one of the most beautiful marriages I’ve ever heard described,” Gilbert said. “The writing is superb and the thinking is elegant.”

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Bestselling author Ann Patchett gives her must-read book recommendations

The international bestselling author recommends Black Is The Body as her top book this summer. “Everyone I have given this book to is holding it like a Bible. They can’t let it go. It’s really life-changing” (Patchett).

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Meet, Greet & Discuss: Black Is The Body - 'Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time and Mine'

Meet, Greet & Discuss: Black Is The Body - 'Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time and Mine' - by author Emily Bernard. 

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Emily Bernard: 4 Saints in 3 Acts

Emily Bernard presents a talk entitled '4 Saints In 3 Acts: Gertrude Stein, The Harlem Renaissance & The Politics Of Race And Representation' delivered at The Photographers' Gallery on Wednesday 25 October 2017 on the occasion of the exhibition 4 Saints in 3 Acts: A Snapshot of the American Avant-Garde (20 October 2017 - 11 February 2018).

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First Wednesdays: Emily Bernard

UVM professor Emily Bernard looks at the power and potential of interracial friendships in a talk at Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury on November 2, 2011. Her talk, "Some of My Best Friends: The Power of Interracial Friendship," is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series.

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Emily Bernard; Interracial Love – Living the Difference

Emily Bernard teaches in the English department at the University of Vermont. On today’s program, we discuss Emily’s essay “Interstates,” a story about identity, race, and belonging.

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1st WedNesdays: Delicious to the Ear

UVM professor Emily Bernard looks at the transformation of beloved poet and activist Maya Angelou in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on January 7, 2015 entitled “Delicious to the Ear: The Inspiring Voice of Maya Angelou,” part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series. Before she became an internationally revered poet, memoirist, and activist, Maya Angelou was mute for five years as a child. Bernard will explain how poetry awakened Angelou’s voice, a voice that transformed a history of trauma into inspiration and beauty.

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