Black Lives Matter
“As leaders of color within the Northwestern community, we write to express our categorical condemnation of the killing of yet another unarmed, defenseless black man in the hands of police officers. The senseless killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis may have sparked the civil unrest we are experiencing across our nation, but it is part of a history of injustice that has persisted over generations. Black people in the U.S. are disproportionately killed by police, and data suggests that police officers are rarely held accountable. Though their deaths were not captured by viscerally disturbing video footage, we also mourn and say the names of others, including Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman who was shot and killed by police in her sleep on March 13 in Louisville, and Tony McDade, a 38-year-old black trans man who was shot and killed by police in Tallahassee just last week.”
Read the full letter from Interim Chief Diversity Officer, Sekile Nzinga, and Chief Human Resource Officer, Manuel Cuevas-Trisán.
A Statement from TriQuarterly
We condemn anti-Black racist police brutality and other racist violence. We condemn the senseless murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and so many other defenseless Black people across the nation. We support protestors in Chicago and nationwide demanding justice. Black Lives Matter.
We recognize that we as an organization must take action and have taken several immediate steps. Our editors have been providing editorial consultations for Black writers, making personal donations to Black Lives Matter, protestor bail funds, and other social justice organizations, and joining protestors in their local communities.
“The Latest Word” on our homepage is currently dedicated to local and national resources for racial justice. We encourage our literary community to make donations, support Black-owned bookstores and other businesses, read antiracist literature, and take action.
TriQuarterly Issue 160, scheduled for publication in summer 2021, will exclusively feature Black poets and prose writers. For this issue, we are engaging Black guest editors in the genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, so that Black artists have total creative control of the issue.
To be clear, this is not a long-term solution. TriQuarterly’s mission as “an international journal of writing, art, and cultural inquiry” is not fully represented by our current masthead and we consider this a failure that must be immediately addressed. We intend to live up to our mission fully by remedying our lack of editorial diversity and inclusion.
