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Author, journalist and cultural critic Farai Chideya will speak on Nov. 5 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Author, journalist and cultural critic Farai Chideya will speak on Nov. 5 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Chideya, who hosted the former National Public Radio program “News and Notes,” will discuss “Digital Drum or Digital Divide: Race, Responsibility and Representation in the New Media.”

The free public talk will be at 7 p.m. in the Hitchcock Multipurpose Room of UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone for Black Culture and History.  Chideya’s talk will be the 17th annual Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture honoring the center’s namesake.

The late Stone advocated for the center, directed the curriculum in African and Afro-American studies and was an adviser to the Black Student Movement in the late 1970s.  The lecture is given by a black woman who is distinguished by her scholarship, commitment to social justice and public service. 

Before NPR, Chideya hosted “Your Call,” a daily news and cultural call-in show in San Francisco. Chideya has contributed commentaries to BET, CNN, FOX and MSNBC and anchored the Oxygen channel’s primetime program “Pure Oxygen.”

Her articles have been published in newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Time, Spin and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

In 1995, Chideya founded PopandPolitics.com, an online journal for 18-29 year olds. The Web site was an official reporting agency for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Chideya wrote three non-fiction books on race, politics and the media, including “The Color of Our Future: Race in the 21st Century” (Harper Perennial, 2000). Her most recent book, “Kiss the Sky,” (Simon & Schuster, 2009) was named Essence magazine’s book club pick for May 2009.  

Chideya graduated magna cum laude in 1990 from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree. She currently serves on the journalism advisory committee of the Knight Foundation, which funds innovation in journalism and technology.
Previous Stone Memorial lecturers have included Julianne Malveaux, Angela Davis, Congresswoman Eva Clayton, Kathleen Cleaver, Sonia Sanchez, Atallah Shabazz and Alfre Woodard.

For more information on Chideya, visit http://www.faraichideya.com. For more information on the Nov. 5 program, contact the center at (919) 962-9001 or visit http://www.unc.edu/depts/stonecenter.
Photo URL: http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/humanities/2009/farai%20chideya.jpg

Stone Center contact: Olympia Friday, (919) 962-7265, ofriday@email.unc.edu
News Services contacts: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589

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