Tropicalfete Authors Connecting Program 2025 ft. Edwin Raymond

Live & In-Person!
Tropicalfete Inc. invites you to Authors Connecting – a powerful cultural reading program for Caribbean American Heritage Month 2025!

Book: An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America
Author: Edwin Raymond – Retired Police Lieutenant, Activist, Author (@E.Raymond_)
Host: Melissa Noel – Award-Winning Journalist (@livefrommelissa)
Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Time: 7 PM
Venue: Tropicalfete Cultural Landmark, 850 New York Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11203 (corner of Linden Blvd & New York Ave)

June 2025 Theme: “Where heritage meets the written word.”

Join us in-person for an empowering conversation on justice, reform, and storytelling.

Event will also be live streamed on multiple platforms!

About the Author:

Edwin Raymond is a recently retired police Lieutenant, activist and now author who was born and raised in the neighborhood of East Flatbush Brooklyn, New York. As the child of Haitian immigrants he experienced hardships after losing his mom to cancer as a toddler and his father becoming unemployed. Despite the struggles, Edwin was able to stay out of trouble but this didn’t prevent the police harassment that so many of his teenaged peers experienced. After regularly facing discrimination at the hands of officers he made the ironic decision to join the NYPD at 22 years old.

He immediately questioned and challenged issues he saw regarding how the police department operated and suffered years of retaliation in return. Despite the pushback he remained dedicated to the community and co-founded a non-profit to mentor at-risk youth.

In 2016 he was featured on the front cover of The New York Times Magazine becoming a whistleblower exposing discriminatory and detrimental policies within the police department and lead plaintiff in the federal case Raymond v. The City of New York.

Raymond is the recipient of the NAACP Courage Under Fire Award, International Documentary Association Courage Under Fire Award and IDA Doc Star of the Month.
He has appeared on The Trevor Noah Podcast, CNN with Anderson Cooper, Freakonomics Radio with Stephen Dubner, NBC News with Sarah Wallace, Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, ABC News, Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas on HBO, the Emmy award winning documentary Crime+Punishment (Hulu) and many more media outlets.

His highly reviewed memoir, named “Best Book of 2023” by The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and Audible, was published in October of 2023, An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America (Penguin Random House/Viking Books). Raymond continues to be one of the nation’s leading voices on police, race and criminal justice matters.

About the Host:

Melissa Noel is an award-winning multimedia journalist, host and media entrepreneur. She has built a distinguished career in news media and the travel industry, specializing in coverage of the Caribbean region and Global Black diaspora. Melissa is the founder and CEO of Mel&N Media, a company specializing in strategic communications and brand development for small businesses and travel brands in North America and The Caribbean.

An accomplished international correspondent, Melissa is a Contributing News and Politics Editor at ESSENCE Magazine, the Caribbean Community Editor at Documented NY, a Pulitzer Center grantee, and an Ethel Payne International Reporting Fellow for foreign correspondence in Africa. She also serves as co-chair of the National Association of Black Journalists' global journalism task force.

A successful media entrepreneur, Melissa was named one of the Top 50 Caribbean American Entrepreneurs by the Carib Biz Network three years in a row. A proud Guyanese American with 15 years of industry experience, Melissa has made a significant impact at the intersection of media, entrepreneurship, and social impact.

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