New York Times – The poet Cornelius Eady took out his phone the other day and clicked to a black-and-white group photo that was taken 43 summers ago when he was a fellow at Bread Loaf, the famous writers’ retreat held each year in Vermont. Eady is easy to spot — he is the only Black person in the picture.
This was not at all unusual for a writers’ retreat in 1980. In fact, it’s not all that unusual at many writers’ retreats 43 years later.
But the fact didn’t sit well with him.
It was a little over a decade later, when Eady was invited to teach at a different retreat, that he met Toi Derricotte, a fellow teacher. She, too, had often been the only Black poet in the room at such gatherings. When they began talking, they discovered that they both shared the same wish: to create a program specifically for Black poets.
“It started as a conversation,” Derricotte said. “We both had a —”
“A recognition,” Eady finished. “I thought, ‘My partner in crime has arrived.’”
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