Author Safia Elhillo to Deliver Keynote at Howard Community College's Fifth Annual Bauder Lecture
Acclaimed author of “Bright Red Fruit” will be joined in conversation with author celeste doaks
COLUMBIA, MD, Sept. 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Howard Community College (HCC) announced that distinguished, bestselling author of “Bright Red Fruit,” Safia Elhillo, will deliver the free keynote at the fifth annual Bauder Lecture on Thursday, September 18, 2025. The 12:30 p.m. lecture will be in a hybrid format, both in-person at the Monteabaro Recital Hall of the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center and live-streamed on Vimeo. The 6 p.m. lecture will be held in person only at the Monteabaro Recital Hall. Following her keynote, Elhillo will be joined by poet, journalist, and author of “Cornrows and Cornfields,” celeste doaks for an in-depth conversation.
“With the fifth Bauder Lecture, we continue to make a world-class author and literary event immediately accessible to our students, staff and community so they can connect with each other in enriching conversations about identity, family, culture, freedom and creative expression.” said Dr. Tara Hart, interim associate dean of liberal studies, and a board director of the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo).
For the fifth annual, free Bauder Lecture, Elhillo will discuss “Bright Red Fruit,” a gripping novel-in-verse, and powerful coming-of-age story about navigating desire, family expectations, and the search for self. “Bright Red Fruit” was selected as the Howard County Book Connection title in partnership with HCC and HoCoPoLitSo.
Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia Elhillo is the author of the books “The January Children,” “Girls That Never Die,” “Home Is Not A Country,” and “Bright Red Fruit.” Elhillo’s work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies including “The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop” and “The Penguin Book of Migration Literature.” With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology “Halal If You Hear Me” (Haymarket Books, 2019), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2020. Elhillo received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work has been translated into several languages, and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet.
Following Elhillo’s keynote, celeste doaks will moderate an in-depth discussion. doaks' journalism work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and Quarterly Black Book Review. Her poems have been published in the Chicago Quarterly Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Bayou Magazine, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her most recent work, “American Herstory,” won Backbone Press's 2018 chapbook competition and was named Best Chapbook by the Maryland Poet Laureate. doaks holds a bachelor’s in English from the University of Baltimore and Master of Fine Arts from North Carolina State University and has held teaching positions at East Carolina University, Morgan State University, Stevenson University, and the University of Delaware.
The fifth annual Bauder Lecture is made possible by a generous grant from Dr. Lillian Bauder, a community leader and Columbia resident. "It is my pleasure to help make it possible for HCC to host diverse, contemporary authors whose great stories will inspire students to co-create a more just, enlightened, and compassionate world," said Dr. Bauder. The event is also made possible through support from the Howard County Public Library System and the Downtown Columbia Partnership.
HCC will host the 12:30 p.m. hybrid and 6 p.m. in-person-only Bauder Lecture at the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center in the Monteabaro Recital Hall, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, Maryland. Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, and to join online, please visit HowardCC.edu/BauderLecture.
ABOUT HCC
Since 1970, Howard Community College (HCC) has been a preferred college choice for students and families in Howard County, Maryland. A public community college, HCC offers associate degree and certificate programs, as well as workforce development training and continuing education classes, to nearly 22,000 credit and noncredit students each year. HCC received the 2019 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s only presidential-level honor for performance excellence in organizations.
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Grace Anastasiadis (She/Hers/Ella) Howard Community College 443-518-1800 prmarketing@howardcc.edu
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