Promotional Information

* POET CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS * Winner: The Harlem Book Fair Phyllis Wheatley Award for Best Young Adult Fiction (2013) * Finalist: NAACP Image Award for Best Young Adult Fiction (2013) * Cave Canem Fellowship 2013-2014 * Caroline Randall Williams is the daughter of acclaimed writer Alice Randall: Alice Randall is the author of The Wind Done Gone, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Rebel Yell, and Ada's Rules. She is a Harvard educated African-American novelist who lives in Nashville and writes country songs. Randall has emerged as an innovative food activist committed to reforms that support healthy bodies and healthy communities. With her daughter Caroline Randall Williams she co-authored the acclaimed cookbook Soul Food Love and the young adult novel The Diary of B.B. Bright, Possible Princess winner of the Phillis Wheatley Award. *The Nashville Ballet will premier the ballet LUCY NEGRO, REDUX based on the book in February 2019 at the TENNESSEE PERFORMANCE ARTS CENTER for 3 performances, estimated audience for the weekend is 3k. *Lucy Negro, Redux the book is being designed in collaboration with the ballet. Part 1 of the book will be Williams' poetry. Part 2 will be the ballet Libretto and short explanation regarding the synthesis of poetry with ballet. Part 3 will be photos from rehearsals. A webpage exclusive to the book will premier a full filmed performance. * The books will include at least 5 black and white professional photos taken from the ballet's rehearsal and also of the actual libretto used by the ballet. *A world premiere ballet by Artistic Director Paul Vasterling, Lucy Negro Redux explores the mysterious love life of literary great William Shakespeare through the perspective of the illustrious "Dark Lady" for whom many of his famed sonnets were written. Based on the book by Nashville poet Caroline Randall Williams, the contemporary ballet explores themes of love, otherness, equality and beauty as the narrator embarks on a journey to discover her own power and worth. Featuring an original score by Grammy Award-winning artist and MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient Rhiannon Giddens with spoken word performed by Williams, Lucy is an imaginative drama brimming with wit and relevancy. * NASHVILLE BALLET CEO AND DIRECTOR PAUL VASTERLING'S AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS * The Center for Ballet and the Arts (NYU) Fellow in Residence in 2017 * Fulbright Award Recipient in 2004 NASHVILLE BALLET AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS * Selected by the Kennedy Center to perform on the Ballet Across America opening gala in 2017 * Nashville Scene's #1 Best Performing Arts Group in 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 *The Nashville Ballet will also be promoting the book. * The ballet Lucy Negro Redux will feature MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient Rhiannon Giddens first work commissioned for a ballet. *The ballet Lucy Negro Redux was created specifically for an African American female lead, a rarity that celebrates diversity in ballet. * Rhiannon Giddens and Caroline Randall Williams will join Nashville Ballet's professional company onstage for all three premiere performances. *Minimum first print run of 5000 books.

About the Author

Caroline Randall Williams is a multi-genre writer and and educator in Nashville Tennessee. She is co-author of the Phyllis Wheatley Award-winning young adult novel The Diary of B.B. Bright, and the NAACP Image Award-winning cookbook Soul Food Love. Named by Southern Living as "One of the 50 People changing the South," the Cave Canem fellow has been published in multiple journals, essay collections and news outlets, including The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, CherryBombe and the New York Times. Her debut collection of poetry, Lucy Negro, Redux: The Bard, a Book, and a Ballet (Third Man Books, Spring 2019) is currently being turned into a ballet.

Reviews

From Chapter 16: "While the premise of Lucy Negro, Redux might be academic, the collection couldn't be further from the kind of antique manuscripts that may only be touched with gloves. These poems are tangible, very much of our own turbulent world. As the first poem, "BlackLucyNegro I," explains, "she's become an Other / way to talk about skin." Williams pulls Lucy's story into this world, examining both historical and contemporary problems of racism. This is a vital book, at once capable of searing insight and complex emotion. The poems speak to our time while giving voice to a ghost." - Erica Wright Full review: https://chapter16.org/not-a-partridge-or-a-ruby/
From Cider Press Review: "As radical as the integration of Sally Hemmings' descendants into Jefferson family reunions is Black Luce's integration into the poetic ideals of the sonnet. There is more than cursing in Black Luce's power. She manages to bless all her pan-African daughters. If "Lucy own her body/She run many other" as Williams reports, through Lucy, all young women of color embody the platonic ideal of Western Civilization's finest love elegies. Through Williams' reclamation of Shakespeare, African diasporic literature grows redolent with the possibility of being simply good literature without identity subdivisions, as worthy as Shakespeare, not other but Cleopatra to his Anthony, beloved for its narrative skill as Othello was to Desdemona, not separated, just elbow-to-elbow with the greats at the lunch counter, individual but never parenthetical. Buy this radical collection of poetry. Steal it if you must. Read it at all costs." - Ann Babson Full review: http://ciderpressreview.com/reviews/a-welcome-bridge- lucy-negro-redux-by-carolyn-randall-williams-marches-on-shakespeare-for-black-southern-writers/#.WyAhxyMrKCg
From BookSlut: "Lucy Negro, Redux is a proud rallying cry of freedom and delight in the sublime magic of Blackness. Randall Williams is keen on dismantling the trope of the Black woman as the Mule of the World, a voiceless pleasure thing. Combining history with honesty and the sting of personal memories, Lucy is no man's "exotic" land to claim. She rises above, radical mortal instrument of God's beauty." - Vanessa Willoughby. Full review: http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2015_09_021280.php