Helen E. Lee earned a BA at 1981 Harvard University in 1981 and a JD at Harvard Law School in 1985. She focuses in Writing and humanistic studies. Helen joined the MIT faculty in 1997. Lee is a highly regarded author whose general subject, the lives and families of African-Americans, has come vividly to life in two well-received novels, *The Serpent's Gift (1994)* and *Water Marked (1999)*. An inspired teacher and mentor at MIT, Lee has also served as fiction editor of "Callaloo," a major literary journal, and as a volunteer writing teacher in Boston-area correctional facilities.

Randall Kenan, writer, biographer of James Baldwin, and author of *The Fire This Time* (2007), looks at the life of Baldwin in the context of today -- where we are with civil rights, religion and impoverished African Americans.