Humanities Forum — Tommy Orange

Wandering Stars: An Evening with Tommy Orange
This event is part of the Spring 2025 Humanities Forum

Award-winning author Tommy Orange will converse with community-based visual artist and folklorist Ashley Minner Jones (Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina) about his recent novel, Wandering Stars. A follow-up to his bestselling debut, There There, Wandering Stars traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family.

Tommy Orange is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel There There, a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about a side of America few of us have ever seen: the lives of urban Native Americans. There There was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year, and won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Pen/Hemingway Award. There There was also longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new novel, Wandering Stars, was published in February 2024. Orange graduated from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California.

Ashley Minner Jones is a community-based visual artist and folklorist from Baltimore, Maryland where she has lived on the same block her entire life. Her interdisciplinary practice is deeply rooted in place—usually within the context of the U.S. South—and is focused on honoring and celebrating everyday people by lifting up their stories. Ashley is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She earned an MFA in Community Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art and a PhD in American Studies from University of Maryland College Park. As an artist, she has exhibited widely and her work is represented in several prominent collections. Her research is being archived as the Ashley Minner Collection in the Albin O. Kuhn Library of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her most recent project is a reconstruction of East Baltimore’s historic American Indian “reservation.” A monograph on the same is forthcoming.

Admission is free, but advanced tickets are recommended. Please visit here to reserve seats.

Charm City Books will be on-site bookseller.

This event is co-sponsored by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Department of American Studies; the Department of English; and The Mosaic: Center for Cultural Diversity.

Linehan Concert Hall, located in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, is easy to visit, with plenty of free parking. Please visit here for directions and parking information.

Tommy Orange photo by Michael Lionstar. Ashley Minner Jones photo by Jill Fannon for BmoreArt.