I was standing on a subway platform in Brooklyn, NY in April as the sun was just hitting the top of the station. I was on the phone with my parents who were back home, almost four hundred miles away in Norwood, NY. I was finishing my gap year between my undergraduate degree and the start of my graduate program at the University of Utah in the fall. I had just gotten the news that I would be working with the Tanner Humanities Center to help facilitate events with writers and humanists on campus.

Established in 1990, our Gateway to Learning Educator Workshops offer K-12 Utah teachers rigorous, affordable professional development opportunities and continuing education courses at the University of Utah. Under the direction of nationally recognized University of Utah faculty members, teachers attend week-long summer workshops to explore current scholarship on academic subjects, new pedagogical methods, curriculum development, and innovative classroom technologies.

The Tanner Humanities Center was proud to host author Nnedi Okorafor in a virtual conversation with Director Erika George and Assistant Professor of English Andrew Shephard. The discussion focused on her writing, which she describes as "Africanfuturism" and "Africanjujuism," as well as her newest novel, NOOR.