Book Launch With Randall Horton

by Lisa
There are four teleconference squares in the image. In the upper left, there is a Black man wearing a red beret and smiling. He is in a white room. Upper right featuers a Black man wearing glasses. In the lower left, a Black woman smiles. She sits in front of a bookcase filled with books. On the lower right is a Black man wearing a windbreaker. All four of them share a joke.

On March 1, 2022, the Notebooks Collective hosted memoirist/poet/musician/teacher Randall Horton for the release of his second memoir, Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays, published by Northwestern University Press. The event was moderated by Ashley Monet Johnson and included guests Mark Johnson and Gary Lyles.

About the Event

Randall asked Mark and Gary to help him launch this book because he wanted a different kind of discussion. He asked them to be join him because they knew him before he was the Dr. Randall Horton we know today. They knew him when he was Hook, when he smuggled dope, when he was incarcerated.

He asked Ashley to moderate the event for two reasons. First, because she is a remarkably talented emerging writer and second, because she is Mark’s daughter. She’s known Randall as a family friend and as an MFA mentor. Her insight is unparalleled. We hope this is a way for you to hear not just Randall’s work, but also about his life and the transformation he was able to make.

The Launch

About Randall

RANDALL HORTON is the author of a previous memoir and several books of poetry, including Pitch Dark Anarchy: Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2013) and The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street. In 2019 he served as poet-in-residence for the Civil Rights Corps in Washington, DC, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea González Poetry, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a Right to Return Fellowship from the Soze Foundation, he currently sits on the Advisory Board of PEN America’s PEN Prison Writing Program. He is a professor of English at the University of New Haven.

About Ashley

Ashley Johnson’s essays have appeared in Sleet, Glassworks, and Iron City Magazine. Her essay Sing was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. She is currently working on a hybrid-memoir that examines the residual effects of mass incarceration on the Black family structure. Ashley holds her MFA from the Solstice MFA Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College, MA in Education from UMUC, and BS in Criminal Justice from Marymount University. Ashley currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband and their two sons.