A Note From The Director

46th Annual Langston Hughes Festival

February 13 - 14, 2025

2025 Langston Hughes Festival Program

In 1925, a literary, musical, artistic, cultural, and unapologetically Black movement solidified in Harlem, and 100 years later, we will gather to commemorate and celebrate the Harlem Renaissance and one of its greatest and most prolific scholars, Langston Hughes, during the Annual Langston Hughes Festival. In 2025, The City College of New York (CCNY) will bestow the Festival Medal upon New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay. 

This year's Festival will also celebrate the reestablishment of the Black Studies Department at CCNY with a Fundraising Breakfast in honor of Hughes and Black Studies. 

In 1925, a group of friends held a breakfast party for Langston Hughes; they took a picture at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue, and historic Shepard Hall can be seen in the background of the photo. The new Black Studies Department Office Suite is located in Shepard Hall, and to raise support for Black Studies, we invite you and your beloved — familial love, romantic love, bestie love, sibling love, whatever type of love that may be — to join us in celebrating Langston Hughes who famously wrote, “I was in love with Harlem long before I got there.” 

The first Langston Hughes Festival Fundraising Breakfast will be Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14, 2025 at 11:00am in Shepard 250, with special MC & CCNY Alumnus Kevin "Dot Com" Brown from Thirty Rock.

The 2025 Langston Hughes Festival Theme is Black Love, and we will celebrate Black Love in all its iterations as we honor the reestablishment of the Black Studies Department at CCNY!

Purchase Valentine's Day Breakfast Fundraiser Tickets: $250

The Langston Hughes Festival commences Thursday, February 13, 2025 with a Student Symposium at 12:30pm in Aaron Davis Hall. The Student Symposium will create a vibrant and interdisciplinary space where students can explore the resonances between Hughes’ and Gay’s writings, addressing themes such as race, gender, queer sexualities, migration, cultural erasure, poverty, Harlem and its communities, the environment, the New Negro or Harlem Renaissance, and Haiti and its diaspora. The Student Symposium is free to attend.  

RSVP for the Student Symposium

The Evening Ceremony, Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 6:00pm in Aaron Davis Hall will include a reading by Gay, and she will be joined in conversation by Edwidge Danticat, the 2011 Langston Hughes Festival Recipient. The Musical Guest is Haitian-American performing artist, Pauline Jean. The Evening Ceremony is free to attend.

RSVP for the Evening Ceremony with Roxane Gay

The Langston Hughes Fundraising Breakfast, Friday, February 14, 2025, will be followed by a special live recording of the radio show "Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen" featuring Black Studies Professor and CCNY alum Emmanuel Lachaud at 1:30pm in Shepard Hall.

In addition, in honor of both Gay and Danticat, this special two-day Harlem Renaissance Centennial will include Haitian music and food throughout the events. 

Join us February 13-14, 2025 for the 46th Annual Langston Hughes Festival!

— Jervette R. Ward, Chair of the Black Studies Department & Director of the Langston Hughes Festival