1988 –
Dark Room Collective

Living literary ancestors.
FOUNDERS
- Sharan Strange
- Thomas Sayers Ellis
- Janice Lowe
SPARK
- Funeral of James Baldwin
- St. John the Divine Harlem
MOVEMENT
YEAR
Intro
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Services
The Dark Room Collective hosted a writing workshop and gatherings of black artists and writers at the house. They were visited by African-American literary luminaries such as Alice Walker, bell hooks, Toni Cade Bambara, Derek Walcott, Samuel R. Delany, poet Essex Hemphill, Randall Kenan, Terry McMillan, Ntozake Shange, John Edgar Wideman, and Walter Mosley. They hosted a reading series that paired older writers with younger ones. The group was influenced by Rita Dove. Following problems with their landlord, they relocated the reading series to the Institute of Contemporary Art and later to the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. The series ran through approximately 1998, though a “reunion tour” took place in 2012 and 2013.