Randall Kenan

Author Randall Kenan will be the first lecturer in N.C. Central University’s “Visiting Writer Series” hosted by the Department of English and Mass Communica-tions.

Kenan is the author of “A Visitation of Spirits,” as well as “Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century,” plus a collection of short stories and a biography on James Baldwin.

Kenan will speak in Room 311 of the Farrison-Newton Comm-unications building at 10:40 a.m. Tuesday.

He will host a “creative writers dialogue” at 3:30 p.m. that day in Room 146 of the Alphonso Elder Student Union.

Kenan will sign books at the Hayti Heritage Center on Fayetteville Street at 7 p.m. A reception will follow.

“We are so proud to have received a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council to sponsor this program,” said Mary Mathew, an English professor.

Mathew said they chose Kenan because the series focuses on writers from or in North Carolina.

Kenan was born in Brooklyn and raised by his great aunt in Chinquapin, N.C., a town with a population of 279.

He later taught at Columbia Uni-versity, Duke University, and his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“He hasn’t told us the topic of his lecture, but he will probably discuss his works and what it means to be a writer,” said Mathew.

His latest book, “Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century,” was prompted by a desire to learn more about African American culture. To do this, Kenan made a six-year trek across the United States and parts of Canada.

With a tape recorder, a pad and a pen, Kenan interviewed over 200 African Americans with jobs ranging from congressmen to prostitutes.

Kenan spent most of his time traveling in a 1991 Chevy Blazer and sleeping at Motel 6s.

Altogether Kenan drove 75,000 miles and collected 5,000 pages of material, he distilled this material down to 688 pages.

Each of these individual stories when woven together create a tapestry of black American life today.

“They’ve been like characters in my head for many years,” said Kenan in an interview with Booknotes.org.

Kenan said he hopes that his book can help banish black American stereotypes.