Hear from Associated Press reporter and author of “Who is the Black Panther?,” the novel companion to Marvel’s blockbuster movie “Black Panther,” Jesse Holland as he discusses black heroes and popular culture. His talk will expand on the significance of The Chisholm Kid: Lone Fighter for Justice for All and debunk Hollywood myths about black heroes. A book signing will follow his lecture.
Sponsored in partnership with The University of Tulsa College of Arts & Sciences.
Speaker Bio:
Jesse J. Holland is an award-winning journalist, television personality and author and is responsible for the first novel featuring comics’ most popular black superhero, The Black Panther.
In “Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther?” Holland retells the classic origin of T’Challa, the original Black Panther, and updates it for the new century, giving new fans and longtime die-hard aficionados a good platform and some inside information for the Oscar-nominated “Black Panther” movie from Marvel Studios.
Jesse is an accomplished novelist, having also been trusted by Lucasfilm to chronicle the history of their newest black hero in “Star Wars – Finn – in the young adult novel “Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Finn’s Story.”
In addition to fiction, Jesse is also a nonfiction author, with his book The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves In The White House being named the 2017 silver medal award winner in U.S. History in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and one of the top history books of 2016 by Smithsonian.com. His first book was the now-classic “Black Men Built The Capitol: Discovering African American History In and Around Washington, D.C.”
Jesse is a Race & Ethnicity writer for The Associated Press, having been recognized as one of the few reporters to be credentialed to cover all three branches of the American government during his career: the White House, the Supreme Court and Congress. Jesse is also a weekend host for C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” a frequent guest on NPR’s “Here & Now” and is often called upon as an expert commentator on race relations, diversity, American politics and the history of slavery in Washington, D.C.
Jesse now shares his love of journalism, writing and history through public speaking and teaching, having taught journalism ethics at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies in the Master of Journalism program and served as the Visiting Distinguished Professor of Ethics in Journalism at the University of Arkansas. He now teaches creative nonfiction in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, and speaks at colleges and universities around the world about journalism and writing.
Jesse is from Holly Springs, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi with a Liberal Arts degree with an emphasis in journalism and English. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College in 2012 and was awarded a doctorate of humane letters from LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tennessee in 2018.
