In a few weeks, I’ll be presenting a book talk at the University of Glasgow and there’s something that feels right about carrying the Great Dismal Swamp across the Atlantic, given that transatlantic exchange is precisely what the talk is about. The work centers the community narrators of the Great Dismal Swamp region: the people who have held cultural memory together in the face of sustained erasure, and whose oral traditions constitute, in my view, the most indispensable archive we have.

A particular focus will be the convergence of Moses Grandy, a Great Dismal Swamp waterman and self -emancipated abolitionist of the Great Dismal Swamp, and George Donisthorpe Thompson, the Liverpool-born abolitionist—a relationship that, on close examination, opens onto an entire transatlantic history of resistance.

A few travel notes: I’ll be flying into Edinburgh, which is where JetBlue lands, so most of my time will be based there. I’ll also be making a stop in Copenhagen for a private pop-up book talk at an Americana store, organized in collaboration with another person—details on that one have to stay close to the vest(sorry!)

Suffice it to say the excitement is real.