Join Durham’s beloved jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon for the launch for her new memoir, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow: Improvisations on Loss (Duke University Press). She will be joined in conversation by authors Mark Anthony Neal and Karla FC Holloway. She may even break into song! The conversation will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Books will be available for sale on site, or, if you wish to skip the line, you may pre-purchase directly from Duke University Press. To ensure you have the book in hand for the event, we recommend ordering directly from Duke University Press by Wednesday, October 8. Other retailers may have different shipping timelines.

About the Book:

In Beneath the Skin of Sorrow, her elegiac and lyrical memoir, celebrated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon outlines how drawing on her musical skills of improvisation helped her deal with her grief in the wake of losing her husband and her sister over the course of six months.

Nnenna Freelon is a celebrated jazz vocalist, composer, producer, and host of the award-winning podcast Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon. A seven-time Grammy Award nominee, Freelon is a member of the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. She has released over twelve solo albums, most recently, Beneath the Skin on Origin Records.

Mark Anthony Neal is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African & African American Studies, Professor of English, and Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, and Chair of Duke University’s Academic Council. Neal is the author of six books including, most recently, Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive (2022). Since 2010, Neal has hosted the weekly 2024 Davey Award-winning video podcast Left of Black, produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke.

Karla F.C. Holloway is James B. Duke Professor Emerita. Professor Holloway has published ten books, spanning academic monographs, life writing, and, in most recent years, creative fiction. Passed On: African American Mourning Stories (2002) takes up rituals of mourning, dying, and the related “death care” industry. Her novels Gone Missing in Harlem (2021) (a Publisher’s Weekly starred review) and A Death in Harlem (2019), are mysteries set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance, the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the aftermath of World War I.

An Evening with Nnenna Freelon: Conversation and Book Launch