March 12, 2026 – 2:00 p.m. ET

Taking Ideas Public: A Scholar's Guide to Trade Publishing

Blair LM Kelley, President and Director, National Humanities Center
Tanya McKinnon, Founder and Principal Agent, McKinnon Literary

Join us for a lively conversation on what is lost and gained when academics write for trade publishers. The webinar will feature literary agent and founder of McKinnon Literary, Tanya McKinnon, who for the last 19 years has helped authors bring their ideas to life and find their audience. Tanya will be in dialogue with NHC President and Director Blair LM Kelley to discuss the writing and publication process, and how authors can make the leap from university presses to trade.

Blair LM Kelley is president and director of the National Humanities Center. An award-winning author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience, her scholarship and social commentary have focused on African American social movements, segregation, and the Black working class. Before joining the NHC, she served as the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and directed the Center for the Study of the American South. Previously, Kelley spent 20 years on the faculty and as an administrator at North Carolina State University, including as associate dean of interdisciplinary affairs and partnerships.

Tanya McKinnon is the founder and principal agent of McKinnon Literary. As a literary agent, she works to amplify progressive voices and help authors sharpen their projects regardless of genre. Having spent time on both sides of the agent-author relationship, she draws on this experience to bring a holistic perspective to the publishing industry and ensures her clients and their projects are handled with utmost care. McKinnon represents serious nonfiction, literary fiction, children's books, and graphic novels. Several of McKinnon's clients include New York Times best-sellers, winners of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the LA Times Book Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and many more.

The Dresher Center for the Humanities is continuing our writing group into the Spring 2026 semester on Fridays from 10am to 11:30am online via WebEx.

This writing groups open to faculty, graduate students, and staff working on humanities-related projects.

https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m3e509a76259be1f8e3262d623e29b53d

 A LIVE online conversation on racial healing, cultural resilience, and youth leadership in Baltimore and beyond.

Join us as we…

• honour the intention of the Day of Racial Healing by creating space for reflection + action: exploring how racial healing plays out at individual, community, institutional, and generational levels.

• elevate the lived experience of young people in West Baltimore alongside seasoned leaders, underscoring that healing and transformation require all voices working together.

• highlight the intersection of arts, health equity, and higher education as strategies for racial healing and community flourishing.

• generate tangible next steps: commitments, resource sharing, connection building among participants.

       East Asia is a key region of global cultural, economic, and political significance. Transformations in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan illustrate both global change and local adaptation, while their development models influence Southeast Asia through expanding trade and investment. The Asia Pacific's shared historical and cultural legacies are further deepened by media technologies that connect new generations. 

      This course explores major shifts since the new millennium, including capital flows, neoliberal restructuring, labor, intimacy, education, mobility, urbanization, food, environmental health, and global cultural engagement, which shape new class, gender, and cultural identities in the region and the world.

      Drawing from multiple disciplines, students analyze common challenges and differences across East Asian societies and conduct original research on relevant topics from a global/regional lens. 

In four parts, this series presented by NCPH and the American Conservation experience (ACE) will ask experts to help public historians and public humanitarians tackle questions like: what do we mean when we talk about gen AI? How do we recognize it, and what AI tools have potential use cases for the public humanities? How can we ethically engage with generative AI tools as public historians, museum practitioners, writers, archivists, and educators?

January 15, 2026 — 2:00 p.m. ET

Media Training for Academics

Don Solomon, Vice President for Communications and Marketing, National Humanities Center

Many academics struggle with the desire to share their expertise with mainstream audiences, worrying about how they and their work will be represented. In this session you'll learn how to work with traditional media, including how to engage reporters and get them interested in your work, how to handle press inquiries, and how to make sure your version of the story gets written.

Don Solomon has over 30 years experience sharing stories about products, people, and organizations of all kinds, and since 2006 he has led communications and marketing at the National Humanities Center. Prior to joining the Center, Don was co-founder and principal of Distill Consulting, and has worked with a wide range of clients that includes Michelin, Hanes, IBM, Rhone Poulenc, CooperTools, and the March of Dimes, among others.