Marcus Rediker

On Friday, Oct. 30, 6:15 pm, I will join vocalist Karen Somerville in Chestertown, MD, to present “Freedom Ship: Stories and Songs of Maritime Liberation,” sponsored by the Maryland Center for History & Culture and the Starr Center at Washington College. Join us! www.mdhistory.org/calendar/fre...

On Thursday, Oct. 29, at 5:30 pm, I will speak at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michaels, MD, not far from the birthplace of Frederick Douglass. I will discuss my book *Freedom Ship* in a place where many escaped slavery by sea. See the link for details. cbmm.org/event/freedo...

Here is my blurb for a terrific new book by my friend: "Manuel Monestel is a treasure. He played a central role in rediscovering an almost-lost calypso music in Costa Rica and he writes about it with unparalleled authority, insight, and brilliance." africaworldpressbooks.com/forthcoming-...

Good to meet you, Emily, and thank you for the kind words about the play.

Yesterday Mark Povinelli and I held the third reading of our play, *The Return of Benjamin Lay*, at the Radnor Quaker Meeting House, built in 1718 and a place Benjamin no doubt visited. We thank the Radnor, Newtown, and Middletown Quaker meetings for hosting us. I love the ghostly shadow. On to DC!

What is the role of the artist? @marcusrediker.bsky.social, David Lester, and Paul give voices to people of the past (and future!) with their graphic novel THE BLACK SCHOONER buff.ly/FSei3kR

It is a real honor to receive this year’s Slavery Archive Book Prize for *Freedom Ship*. The award means all the more to me because I have such respect for what @araujohistorian.bsky.social and her colleagues have built through the Slavery Archive Digital Initiative (@slaveryarchive.bsky.social).

One of the many joys of giving a talk about *The Black Schooner* with my co-author David Lester at the New Haven Museum last Wednesday evening was to see my dear friends Christina Heatherton and Jordan T. Camp.

Join us for a staged reading of my play, *The Return of Benjamin Lay*, co-written with Naomi Wallace, to be at Georgetown University's Riggs Library, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, at 7:30pm EDT. events.georgetown.edu/performingar...

I look forward to working again with the gifted vocalist Karen Somerville as we present "Stories and Songs of Maritime Liberation in the Chesapeake" at the Sultana Downrigging Festival in Chestertown, MD, Friday, Oct. 30, 6:15 pm, details below. Join us! downrigging.org/freedom-ship/

I am honored to say that my book *Freedom Ship* has been awarded the 2026 Marion Brewington Book Prize for Maritime History by the Maryland Center for History and Culture.

Film screening at NYU on Monday, Sept. 28 at 7:00 pm: *Becoming Benjamin Lay* will be screened in the Espacio de Culturas auditorium, King Juan Carlos Center, 53 S. Washington Square. Please help us spread the word for this free event. Please register here: as.nyu.edu/research-cen...

THE BLACK SCHOONER transports us from the 1839 Amistad rebellion to the resulting trials in New Haven and an unexpected international victory for the abolitionist movement. Join @marcusrediker.bsky.social and David Lester for their event on September 30! buff.ly/uFsn0LF

Join us for the launch of our new book, *The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad, A Graphic Novel*, Wed., Sept. 30, 6:00 pm, at the New Haven Museum. I will be there in person and co-author David Lester will join remotely. The event is free. Register here: cthumanities.org/event/the-bl...

Delighted to say, our film *Becoming Benjamin Lay* has won the 2026 “Audience Award,” Best Feature-Length Film in the ReelAbilities Film Festival Pittsburgh. www.instagram.com/p/DdebWiuDMKm/

My blurb for Chloe Ireton’s new book, forthcoming from Hurst in November: “Chloe Ireton has brought to vivid life a love story in *Plotting for Freedom* and thereby made a unique, moving, deeply human, and sure to be lasting contribution to Atlantic history.” hurstpublishers.com/book/plottin...

My blurb: “Graham Hodges has made a lifetime of major contributions to the study of American slavery and abolition. His biography of Henry Highland Garnet is a triumph -- a deeply-researched and altogether brilliant portrait.” yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Happy to say that my book *Freedom Ship* will be published in Italian as *Fugitives: The Secret Routes to Freedom* by Elèuthera Edizioni, based in Milan. This is the second translation to appear so far, the other in German, with a third coming in Spanish. www.eleuthera.it/scheda_libro...

🗣️ Mark your calendars, New Haven! The New Haven Museum is hosting @marcusrediker.bsky.social and David Lester’s launch for their graphic novel, THE BLACK SCHOONER, on September 30 at 4PM! The program is free and offered as a Connecticut Freedom Trail Month activity. buff.ly/p8TswDq

Honored that my book *Freedom Ship* has been named a finalist for this year's #Slaveryarchive Book Prize.

Penn was a good place to study while I was there, from 1976-1982: Dell Hymes and William Labov (linguistics), Arjun Appadurai and Anthony Wallace (anthropology), and Erving Goffman (sociology). I learned the most from a historian of great and unruly brilliance, early Americanist Michael Zuckerman.

When I arrived at Penn for graduate study 50 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. No one in my family had ever gone to college, much less grad school. As Malcom X said, you could have hung a placard around my neck that said “hick” and it couldn’t have been any more obvious.

Fifty years ago this month I went to Penn for graduate study: Early American/Caribbean slavery with Richard S. Dunn. I began to study sailors and pirates and eventually wrote what would become my first book, *Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea* (1987). I returned to slavery in subsequent books.

Many years ago, when I was in graduate student at Penn, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz invited me to come work with him as one-year fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. I was forced to decline, but I have always wondered what would have happened had I gone.

Film screening in NYC: We will show *Becoming Benjamin Lay* at New York University on Monday, Sept. 28 at 7:00 pm in the Espacio de Culturas auditorium, King Juan Carlos Center, 53 S. Washington Square. The event is free but please register by the link below: www.eventbrite.com/e/becoming-b...

We will hold the launch of our graphic novel *The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad, A Graphic Novel* at the New Haven Museum on Wed., Sept. 30 at 6:00 pm. The event is free but registration is required. See the link below. Join us! zip06.com/news/918822/...

Thrilled to team up with vocalist Karen Somerville to present my book *Freedom Ship* through story and song at the Downrigging Festival in Chestertown, MD, Friday, Oct. 30. I loved working with Karen on a similar presentation of the *The Slave Ship* years ago. downrigging.org/event/americ...

Grateful to the good people at City of Asylum (@cityofasylum.bsky.social) for the screening of *Becoming Benjamin Lay* Monday evening before a large and enthusiastic audience, in person and online. With film director Tony Buba and Darin Lee, Director of Public Programming at CoA.

As many of you know, I am a collector of Haitian art. Here is a 1955 painting by a little-known artist named Roland Bigaud, who might have been related to the famous Wilson Bigaud. The luminous color used to depict a vodou ceremony is extraordinary.

Honored that our film *Becoming Benjamin Lay* is an official selection of Pittsburgh’s ReelAbilities Film Festival. Anyone in PA, OH, and WV who would like to watch the film and at the same time support the festival, may screen it here between Sept. 4-13: reela26.eventive.org/films/6a7a2f...

For the many of you who have expressed a desire to see our new documentary film, *Becoming Benjamin Lay*, here is an opportunity. Wherever you live, you can livestream tonight’s screening at @cityofasylum.bsky.social, 7:00 pm, through Vimeo. Sign up to do so here: cityofasylum.org/program/tony...

Tomorrow evening, Monday, Aug. 31! Join Tony Buba and me for the screening of our film, *Becoming Benjamin Lay*, at @cityofasylum.bsky.social, 40 W. North Ave. on Pittsburgh’s Northside, 7:00 pm, in-person or remote. Please register for the free event here: cityofasylum.org/program/tony...

My blurb for a terrific book coming in Jan. 2027: "... Christian Hogsbjerg places revolt by enslaved people at the center of a creative and inspiring Atlantic-wide freedom story, renewing and going beyond CLR James’s classic *History of Pan-African Revolt*." www.bloomsbury.com/us/atlantic-...

Sad to learn of the death of my friend Ruth Hsu, who taught literature at the University of Hawai’i-Mānoa. Ruth was a lively presence in a course I taught at UH in 2019, “How to Write History from Below.” She was smart, learned, funny, kind, and gracious. I shall miss her very much. RIP.

It was my great pleasure to see a spectacular performance of Shakespeare’s *The Tempest* last night at the Carrie Furnace Works, produced by Quantum Theatre. This brings to a close the illustrious career of Artistic Director Karla Boos, who founded Quantum in 1990. She went out in a blaze of glory!

Next Monday, August. 31, 7:00 pm: Tony Buba and I will screen our film, *Becoming Benjamin Lay*, at City of Asylum (@cityofasylum.bsky.social). Join us! The event is free but registration is requested though the link below. cityofasylum.org/program/tony...

Tremendously honored that my book *Freedom Ship* has been given a Josephine Miles Award by PEN Oakland, a writers group founded by Ishmael Reed and others in 1991, the “Blue Collar PEN,” according to the *New York Times*. Other winners this year include Walter Mosley and Boots Riley.

Here is an interview I did about the body of my work with Thiago Gama for the Brazilian platform @outraspalavras.net. The title is “The Ship: The Factory before the Factory.” You can read it in either Portuguese or (with Google translate) English. outraspalavras.net/historia-e-m...

Sad to hear of the passing of Sumit Sarkar, one of India’s greatest historians. It was an honor to meet him when I visited Kolkata and Delhi in 2008. He was a brilliant, gentle, altogether lovely man. The world is poorer today. frontline.thehindu.com/other/obitua...

In my new book on “history from below,” I will discuss what I learned from my grandfather, a coal miner and a master storyteller, as he sat at the kitchen table, Lucky Strike cigarette in one hand, a cup of Maxwell House coffee in the other, spinning marvelous tales. He worked in Beech Creek, KY.

8/14 2026 MAAH Stone Book Award ShortList: Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea Marcus Rediker @marcusrediker.bsky.social @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social @vikingbooks.bsky.social

For all you writers out there: a list of sixteen writing tips, culled from long experience of trying get unruly words down onto the page. Originally posted on social media, recently republished in the *Pittsburgh Review of Books (@pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social). pghrev.com/sixteen-writ...

Later this month — please mark your calendars! Tony Buba and I will screen our film, *Becoming Benjamin Lay* at the City of Asylum, 40 W North Ave., Pittsburgh on Monday, August 31 at 7:00 pm. Join us! cityofasylum.org/program/tony...

A third thing-I-planned-to-do but never did: write an overview of labor history for 17c/18c North America, a book-length version of my article “Good Hands, Stout Hearts, and Fast Feet.” Commissioned by Eric Foner for Hill & Wang Books. I was too busy with *The Many Headed-Hydra*.

For all you writers out there: a list of sixteen writing tips, culled from long experience of trying get unruly words down onto the page. Originally posted on social media, recently republished in the *Pittsburgh Review of Books (@pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social). pghrev.com/sixteen-writ...

Coming in September 2026, a translation into German of my book *Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea*, courtesy of Assoziation A based in Berlin. www.assoziation-a.de/buch/freihei...