Member Event
Reception and Lecture: The AfroFuture Now with John Jennings
Thurs. May 1, 2025 5:30 p.m. Reception | 6:30 p.m. Lecture
Town Hall Seattle
UWAA members are invited to enjoy food, beverages and good company at a special pre-lecture reception with Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling artist and graphic novelist John Jennings before he takes the stage at Town Hall Seattle.
After the reception, head to your seat in the UWAA member section to hear Jennings explore the major themes in the Afrofuturism movement, track the timeline of its growth, and posit future possibilities around this vibrant and ever-changing way of seeing the world.
UWAA life members enjoy a free, signed copy of Jennings’ award-winning adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic novel, “Parable of the Sower!”
This event is FREE; advance registration is required.
About the Speaker
John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture.
As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric.
Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.
Learn more at the John Jennings Studio homepage.
This event is part of the UWAA’s Member Appreciation Month presented by BECU. Thanks for being a member! Not a member? Join now.
Presented in partnership:
