Writing about Culture: A Conversation with Angelica Jade Bastién and Shamira Ibrahim

Wednesday March 22, 12.30-1.30, on Zoom

Register here for the link!

Angelica Jade Bastién is a Southern-born critic and essayist for New York Magazine’s site, Vulture. She uses pop culture as a lens to explore madness, blackness, desire, and womanhood, amongst other deeply held obsessions. Her work carefully synthesizes analysis of narrative, cinematography, and acting alongside a deep consideration of production decisions and the history of the industry itself. She was once described by a close friend as “deliciously vulgar.” She lives in Chicago with her two cats, Judah and Professor Butch Cassidy.

Shamira Ibrahim is a Brooklyn-based culture writer by way of Harlem, Canada, and East Africa, who explores identity, cultural production and technology via a race critical code framework as a critic, reporter, and essayist, with a particular emphasis on francophone accessibility in the anglophone Black diaspora. Her work has been featured in publications such as New York Magazine, Essence, The Atlantic, The New York Times, NPR, Teen Vogue, OkayAfrica, The Baffler and Harper’s Bazaar. In 2020 she was named as an honoree on OkayAfrica’s annual “One Hundred Women” list, celebrating women who are “building infrastructure, both literally and metaphorically, for future generations in Africa and in the Diaspora.” She currently manages a bilingual column, Négritude, for Amaka Studio, a digital media publisher for the African diaspora, paired with curated Francophone playlists.

Sponsored by Queens College School of Arts