Alice Randall
Her most frequent topics include: fiction, fiction writing, and literary theory; soul food cookbooks, Black foodways, and Black Cocktail culture; Black presence and influence in country music, country lyric in American culture, a country music through a feminist lens. She is known for integrating cooking demonstrations, food tastings, and even pop-up hula hooping sessions into her talks. Randall’s fiction has been or is currently being taught at a wide range of universities, including Fisk, Harvard, Iowa State, Penn State, Philander Smith, Princeton, Tuskegee, The University of Texas Austin, The University of Virginia, and Wesleyan.
Alice Randall is a New York Times best-selling novelist, award-winning songwriter, educator, and food activist.
A graduate of Harvard University, she holds an honorary doctorate from Fisk University, is on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, and credits Detroit’s Ziggy Johnson School of the Theater with being the most influential educational institution in her life. She is widely recognized as being one of the most significant voices in 21st century African-American fiction.
Randall has presented across the nation: In auditoriums, libraries, museums, and ballrooms; in fields, in graveyards, and harborside. She once did a talk for a group of students as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
In all those spaces she weaves history, literature, practical wisdom, and political passion into powerful exchanges with large and small audiences. She covers expected territory in unexpected ways and makes unexpected territory accessible.