Reading is freedom: A conversation with derrick adams, D. Watkins, Devin Allen, and Lawrence Burney

Derrick Adams is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Adams’ work celebrates and expands the dialogue around contemporary Black life and culture through scenes of normalcy and perseverance. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, New York, in 1996 and graduated with an MFA from Columbia University, New York, in 2003. In addition to his critically acclaimed art practice, Adams has held numerous teaching positions and is currently a tenured assistant professor in the School of Visual, Media and Performing Arts at CUNY Brooklyn College. He also holds an honorary doctorate from Maryland Institute College of Art.

In 2022, Adams established Charm City Cultural Cultivation, a non-profit organization to support and encourage underserved communities in the city of Baltimore through events conducted by three entities: The Last Resort Artist Retreat, a residency program that subscribes to the concept of leisure as therapy for the Black creative; The Black Baltimore Digital Database, a collaborative counter-institutional space for collecting, storing, and safekeeping the data of local archival initiatives; and Zora’s Den, an online community of Black women writers started in January 2017, which has since expanded to in-person writing workshops, a writers’ circle, and a monthly reading series that strive to promote instruction, support, and social engagement.

D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, WhereTomorrows Aren’t Promised, Black Boy Smile, and other books. His book We Speak for Ourselves was Enoch Pratt Free Library’s 2020 One Book Baltimore selection. 

Some of Watkins’ awards include the James Beard Media Award, Los Angeles Press Club Award, Gordon Park Fellowship, Pratt Library Hackerman Writer Fellowship, Vernon Jarrett “Medal of Journalistic Excellence, Society of Professional Journalists “Dateline Award for Commentary, ” Gold Signal Award, Johns Hopkins University “Society of Scholars, ” Johns Hopkins University “Distinguished Alumnus Award, ” City Lit “Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts,” and the Maryland Library Association’s “William Wilson Maryland Author Award.

Watkins is executive producer of the HULU film Hoops, Hopes and Dreams. He is a writer on the HBO mini-series We Own This City and host of the show’s companion podcast. He was also featured in the HBO documentary The Slow Hustle. His work has been published in the New York Times, Esquire, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications.

Watkins is a professor at the University of Baltimore, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. He also holds a Master of Education degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Baltimore native Devin Allen is a self-taught artist who achieved national recognition when his photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was featured on the cover of Time magazine in May 2015, rendering him only the third amateur photographer to have his work published by the magazine. Following the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor, his photograph from a Black Trans Lives Matter protest appeared on the cover of Time in June 2020. Allen became the inaugural fellow of the Gordon Parks Foundation in 2017 and continues to serve as a dedicated ambassador. He is also a 2024-2025 Baldwin For The Arts Fellow. His photographs have appeared in publications such as New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, i-D magazine, and Aperture, and have been exhibited at the Jack Shainman Gallery, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum. They are also part of the permanent collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum; the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. An accomplished author, Allen released his first book, A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket Books, 2017), which garnered an NAACP Image Award nomination. He later published No Justice, No Peace: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter (Hachette Book Group, 2022), winning a Nautilus Book Award.

Lawrence Burney is a writer, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore’s music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York magazine, GQ, and Pitchfork. He has also worked at The Fader, VICE, and The Baltimore Banner. No Sense in Wishing is his first book. Follow him on Instagram and X @TrueLaurels.