Join PEN America for an intimate dinner and conversation in Dallas, Texas with novelist Alan Govenar in celebration of his children’s book Stompin’ at the Savoy. Govenar will be joined in conversation with playwright Phaedra Michelle Scott, a collaborator on the book’s stage adaptation. This evening is being generously hosted by Lauren Embrey and Erin Cluley.
Donation to attend: $150. Please RSVP to rlamarque@penamerica.org to reserve your spot.
About Stompin’ at the Savoy:
Through extensive interviews with jazz dancer Norma Miller, Govenar captures the vitality, wry humor, and indomitable spirit of an American treasure.
When she was just five years old, in 1924, Norma Miller knew just what she wanted to do for the rest of her life: she wanted to dance. It was the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, and Norma lived behind New York’s Savoy Ballroom, the only dance hall in a still-segregated America where blacks and whites could mingle on the same mahogany floor. Before long, the feisty Norma would rise to fame as one of the first performers of the Lindy Hop, an acrobatic dance style named for Charles Lindbergh’s first solo flight (or “hop”) across the Atlantic. With the celebrated dance troupe Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a teenage Norma would cross the Atlantic herself on a tour of Europe and even strut her stuff on the silver screen.
In this invigorating, humorous, and thought-provoking oral autobiography, Govenar captures the sound and spirit of Norma Miller’s voice as she recalls her early years and coming of age as a determined young dancer during the heyday of swing.
Alan Govenar is an award-winning writer, poet, playwright, photographer, and filmmaker. He is director of Documentary Arts, a non-profit organization he founded to advance essential perspectives on historical issues and diverse cultures. Govenar is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of more than thirty books. His novel Boccaccio in the Berkshires was published by Deep Vellum in 2021, and two works of nonfiction, See That My Grave is Kept Clean: the World and Music of Blind Lemon Jefferson & Deep Ellum and Central Track, were published by Deep Vellum in 2023.
Phaedra Michelle Scott is a writer based in New York City. Selected playwriting credits include GOOD HAIR; DIASPORA!; and PLANTATION BLACK. Scott is currently under commission by OneTalk Media, Documentary Arts, and RoundHill Music for three new musicals. She is an alum of Playwrights Horizon’s New Works Lab, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Pipeline PlayLab and is an alum of Youngblood with Ensemble Studio Theater. She is a staff writer for CBS/Viacom, and a proud member of the Writers Guild of America and Dramatists Guild.
The PEN America Authors’ Evenings are nights of literary dinners in private homes and intimate settings. Please visit the Authors’ Evenings webpage for a full calendar of dinners.
Proceeds from the PEN America Authors’ Evenings support PEN America’s programming to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange.