This reading and exhibition will feature artistic expressions of Shay Youngblood and participants of Bookmaking: A Workshop for Writers and Artists. The Bookmaking workshop series held by ALLGO created a space for eight writers and visual artists to generate new writing, build a portfolio of future projects, design and craft original handmade books and altered artists books. In the workshops participants learned to make a variety of hand-made books and explored possibilities for publishing their creative works. Books made in the workshop will be available for purchase. Sponsored in part by the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin and BookWoman. This project is also funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. – Toni Morrison Shay Youngblood is an award winning novelist/playwright/visual artist/teacher/mentor. Her plays include Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery, Talking Bones and Amazing Grace. Her novels Soul Kiss and Black Girl in Paris were published by Riverhead Books, her paintings have been exhibited in Boston, New York City and Texas and her essays have been published in Oprah Magazine among others. She has taught in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU, a Rhode Island Women’s Prison and lectures widely in the U.S. and internationally. Currently she is Writer in Residence at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.