EventsCommon Ground
JustLeadershipUSA: Reverend Vivian Nixon and DeAnna Hoskins
Featuring Rev. Nixon, Hoskins, and Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
Thursday, December 23, 2021 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific
These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.
Leaders in criminal justice reform Reverend Vivian Nixon and DeAnna Hoskins sit down with Rail Editor-at-Large Reverend Dr. Donna Schaper for a conversation on the work of JustLeadershipUSA. We conclude with a poetry reading by Rail Poetry Editor Anselm Berrigan.
Reverend Vivian D. Nixon
Advocate and writer Reverend Vivian D. Nixon is Executive Director of College & Community Fellowship (CCF), an organization that helps women and families most harmed by mass criminalization gain equitable access to opportunity and human rights. Instructed and ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Reverend Nixon has an MFA from Columbia School of the Arts, and currently teaches at Bennington College’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action. She is a recipient of the John Jay Medal for Justice and Fellowships with programs at the Aspen Institute, Open Society Foundations, and Pen America. Reverend Nixon has published book chapters, essays, and poetry, recently co-editing a collection of essays : What We Know: Solutions from Inside the Justice System.
DeAnna Hoskins
President and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA) DeAnna Hoskins has been at the helm of the organization since 2018. Prior to JLUSA, Ms. Hoskins was at the Department of Justice where she joined under the Obama Administration. Prior to joining the DOJ, Ms. Hoskins was the founding Director of Reentry for Ohio’s Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners. Ms. Hoskins is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio and holds a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelors of Social Work from the College of Mount St. Joseph. She is a Licensed Clinical Addictions Counselor, a certified Workforce Development Specialist trainer for formerly incarcerated people, a Peer Recovery Coach, and is trained as a Community Health Worker.
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
Community builder Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper served as Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church from 2006 to 2021. She was formerly at Coral Gables Congregational Church in Miami and before that at Yale University, and teaches leadership at the Hartford Seminary. As an elder, she is passionately concerned about leaving the next generation well-prepared for all they have to face. She has written over 35 books including Approaching End of Life: A Practical and Spiritual Guide (2015), Grace at Table: Small Spiritual Solutions to Large Material Problems, Solving Everything (2013), to her most recent book I Heart Francis: Letters to the Pope from an Unlikely Admirer (2016), among many others. She is an Editor-at-Large at the Rail.
The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we're fortunate to have Dao Strom reading.
Dao Strom
Artist Dao Strom works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020) and its musical companion Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys and Grass Roof, Tin Roof. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder of two collective art projects, She Who Has No Master(s), and De-Canon.
We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨