Save Harlem Now! and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture invite you to Two Voices: One Harlem, an evening with David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian, and New York Times bestselling author Victoria Christopher Murray, moderated by Sylvia White of the Harlem Writers Guild.
David Levering Lewis is professor emeritus of history at New York University. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for each volume of his landmark biography of W. E. B. Du Bois. He is the author of eleven books that explore African American history, culture, and the intellectual currents that shaped the modern world. Among his most influential works is When Harlem Was in Vogue, a vivid account of the Harlem Renaissance that captures the writers, artists, and political leaders who made Harlem the cultural capital of Black America in the early twentieth century.
Mr. Lewis is also the author of God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570–1215, which examines the profound influence of Islamic civilization on the development of Europe, and King: A Biography (co-authored with Martin Luther King Jr.), an early portrait of the civil rights leader’s life and philosophy. His two-volume biography of W. E. B. Du Bois—W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 and W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963—is widely regarded as the definitive study of the towering intellectual and activist. His latest book The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790-1958 published in 2025 tells his family’s American story.
Mr. Lewis has received fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the Wilson Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in New York City.
Victoria Christopher Murray is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies, both of which she co-authored with Marie Benedict. She attended Hampton University and received her MBA from New York University Stern School of Business.
Sylvia White is the Executive Vice President at Bridge Philanthropic Consulting. Ms. White is fundraising executive with a proven track record in overseeing major fundraising annual and capital campaigns.
With more than 30 titles and 3 million books in print, Ms. Murray has won ten African American Literary Awards, and has five NAACP Image Award nominations, winning in 2016. Five of her novels have been made into movies for Lifetime. Her latest novel, Harlem Rhapsody, is a USA Today Best Seller and was a CBS News Calvi Book Club pick.
Ms. White earned her undergraduate degree from Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey and her Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Baruch College of the City University of New York. Her post-graduate work includes a certificate in Business Administration from New York University. Ms. White is a proud member of the Harlem Writers Guild, the oldest continuously operating Black writers workshop in the United States.
This special program offers an intimate chat between two literary giants whose work—though distinct in genre—shares a profound connection to Harlem. The conversation will bridge the worlds of historical scholarship and historical fiction.
We hope you will join us for what promises to be a fascinating and inspiring evening celebrating Harlem’s literary and historical legacy.
Admission: FREE