Playwright of 'X' to speak Nov. 7 in Living Writers Series

Award-winning playwright and poet Marcus Gardley, working on a play that will stage this spring at SUNY Oswego and around the nation about the life and death of Malcolm X, will speak at 3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 7, in Marano Campus Center auditorium in the college’s Living Writers Series.

Gardley has been part of the three-year project of The Acting Company to twin his play “X: The Tragedy of the Prophet El-Hajj Malik Shabazz” with Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” at SUNY Oswego, Le Moyne and Hamilton colleges, as well as other higher education and secondary institutions across the country. “Julius Caesar” is scheduled to stage Monday, March 27, and “X” the next day, both at 7:30 p.m. in Tyler Hall’s Waterman Theatre.

Author of “Every Tongue Confess,” “On the Levee” and other plays that helped earn him the 2011 PEN-Laura Pels Award for Mid-Career Playwright, Gardley joins an eclectic Living Writers Series lineup that has included video game producer Jeff Gardiner, web series writer Suzanne Johnson, novelist Karen Bao, poet Jericho Brown, and non-fiction writer and former reporter Warren St. John, author of 2015-16 Oswego Reading Initiative selection “Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team and One Woman’s Quest for Make a Difference.”

The Living Writers Series, an annual program linked to an English and creative writing class at SUNY Oswego, encourages students to get to know the visiting writers, to immerse themselves in the authors’ writings, to participate in question-and-answer sessions and often to go to dinner afterward with authors.

While the public is invited to attend the literary guests’ presentations, parking on campus is limited to those with a permit; for those without a current SUNY Oswego parking sticker, visit oswego.edu/parking for information on obtaining a $1 daily permit.