Verdell Frazier Young Symposium

Join us on Friday, February 13 at 12 noon in Latzer Hall for the annual Verdell Frazier Young Symposium Distinguished Speaker event in conjunction with the Friday Forum/Conversation Cafe series, featuring reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer, Renee Bracey Sherman.  

Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. For a decade she led We Testify, an organization she founded dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who've had abortions. Her writing can be found in a variety of newspapers and several books including Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements, Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade, and Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis. In 2024, she and her co-author Regina Mahone released their debut book, LIBERATING ABORTION: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve and they are also the co-hosts of The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion, a podcast from The Meteor. She lives in Washington, DC where she is a PhD student at American University’s School of Communication. 

This event is open to all eligible persons regardless of gender, race, color or national origin. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request, please contact womenscenter@illinois.edu.