CELINA — The Lake Campus of Wright State University will be celebrating Black History Month on Monday, Feb. 12, in James F. Dicke Hall. The evening will begin at 4 p.m. with Lynnette Ford followed by a musical performance by Trio Pi + One. This event is free and open to the public. Promotional material is attached.

Ford will share Stories Feed the Heart: Black Appalachian Folktales and More. Her program concentrates on the folktales and folklore, shared with humor, history and heart, the kind of cross-cultural stories many Appalachian families shared to offer joy, honor heritage, and entertain themselves during long winter evenings.

She is an internationally respected, fourth-generation Affrilachian storyteller, author and workshop presenter. Her folktale adaptations and original stories are rooted in her family’s multicultural Black Appalachian (or Affrilachian) heritage. Ford’s work has taken her to major storytelling festivals and literacy and storytelling conferences across the country, as well as in Australia and Ireland, an, via the Zoomiverse, in Germany and for the Federation of Asian Storytellers story swaps. She is an Ohio teaching artist with the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education and the Ohio Teaching Artists rosters, and a Thurber House mentor for young authors, with more than thirty years of experience and several award-winning publications. She is a two-time recipient of the National Storytelling Network’s ORACLE Circle of Excellence award, and a 2023 recipient of the National Association of Black Storytellers’ Black Appalachian Storytelling Fellowship and NABS’ prestigious Zora Neale Hurston Award.

Trio Pi + One will perform at approximately 5:20 p.m. They will be featuring the music of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other great contributors to the American Jazz Playbook.