Join us as for a special afternoon event with Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad, Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and author of the new book The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.

RSVP IS REQUESTED: We are asking you to RSVP in advance so we can make the necessary arrangements for seating, coffee, etc.:

ABOUT THE FIRE INSIDE

The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.

Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment.

“I have followed and admired Rima Vesely-Flad’s work for years. She is tapping resources that all of us can access for greater hope and change.”
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

ABOUT DR. RIMA VESELY-FLAD

Rima Vesely-Flad, Ph.D. is a research affiliate at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor of Buddhism and Black Studies at Union Theological Seminary, NYC. She leads Buddhist teaching and meditation courses at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and former Director of the Inside Out Prison Education Program which is a partnership between the Swannanoa Correctional Institution for Women and Warren Wilson College.

She is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies. She is also a Fulbright Scholar and Awardee in South Africa and Ghana. She is a contributing writer for Lion’s Roar and other publications and the author of two academic books Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives and the Struggle for Justice (2017).