Buffalo Area Poetry & Literature Calendar (week of July 7-July 13)

Tuesday, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Tuesdays at Cabernet, monthly open mic poetry and prose reading series hosted by Sinead Tyrone. Cabernet's Wine Café , 9 N. Ellicott St., Williamsville.

Wednesday, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.: The Importance of Local Journalism, a writer's group presentation by Max Borsuk,  the Editor in Chief of The Springville Journal and The Herald Courier (two WNY newspapers that serve rural areas). Borsuk will give a presentation on his roles as a journalist and the importance of local newspapers and archives.  After the presentation, writers are welcome to write in silence, or to break up into critique groups. Art's Café, 5 East Main Street, Springville, NY.

Wednesday, 9 p.m.: Poetry Night at Caffe Aroma, biweekly open mic reading series hosted by Ben Brindise and Justin Karcher. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Thursday, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.: The Larkin Square Author Series presents  New York Times best selling author Ann Hood  returning to Larkin Square to speak about her new novel, The Stolen Child. Joining Ann will be her husband, Michael Ruhlman, James Beard Award winning food writer  and author of a new novel, If You Can’t Take the Heat (Penguin). Books available from Talking Leaves Books, a co-sponsor of the event. Larkin Square, 745 Seneca St., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Friday, 6 p.m. to  8 p.m.: Fundraiser  for the Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project.  At 6:30 pm, Chris Hawley will deliver a presentation on the Buffalo Niagara LGBTQ History Project’s work and why it is important. Vegan feast by Sunshine Vegan Eats comes with price of admission of $30 to benefit  Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project. Open bar for beer, wine, and cider. Eugene V. Debs Hall, 483 Peckham St., Buffalo.

Saturday, 4:30 p.m.: Book talk with award-winning historian Robin Bernstein, author of Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (University of Chicago Press).

In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial factories. There, “slaves of the state” were leased to private companies. The prisoners earned no wages, yet they manufactured furniture, animal harnesses, carpets, and combs, which consumers bought throughout the North. Then one young man challenged the system.

In Freeman’s Challenge, Robin Bernstein tells the story of an Afro-Native teenager named William Freeman who was convicted of a horse theft he insisted he did not commit and sentenced to five years of hard labor in Auburn’s prison. Incensed at being forced to work without pay, Freeman demanded wages. His challenge triggered violence: first against him, then by him. Freeman committed a murder that terrified and bewildered white America. And white America struck back—with aftereffects that reverberate into our lives today in the persistent myth of inherent Black criminality. William Freeman’s unforgettable story reveals how the North invented prison for profit half a century before the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery “except as a punishment for crime”—and how Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and other African Americans invented strategies of resilience and resistance in a city dominated by a citadel of unfreedom.

Through one Black man, his family, and his city, Bernstein tells an explosive, moving story about the entangled origins of prison for profit and anti-Black racism.

Books available from Talking Leaves Books, a co-sponsor of the event. North Presbyterian Church, 300 North Forest Rd., Williamsville, NY. Free and open to the public.