Don Lemon‘s new book This Is The Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism is an urgent, deeply personal, riveting plea, which he hopes will “help heal America”. Host of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, he will be talking with political analyst and MSNBC host of The ReidOut, Joy-Ann Reid on Saturday March 20 at 7 p.m.

Beginning with a letter to one of his Black nephews, Lemon reports and reflects on his slave ancestors, his upbringing in the shadows of segregation, and his adult confrontations with politicians, activists, and scholars. Lemon shows us all how deep our problems lie, and what we can do to begin to fix them, and offers a searing and poetic ultimatum to America: We must resist racism every single day. We must resist it with love.

Tickets cost $30 and include a copy of the book This Is The Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism (value $28). The first 100 people to register will receive a signed copy of the book. Tickets can be bought via our ticketing platform http://bit.ly/DonLemon320.

Books can be picked up at Festival partner watchung booksellers www.watchungbooksellers.com in Montclair after the March 16, 2021 release date, or shipped to your home address (additional cost, select option when selecting ticket). The event will be held on Crowdcast and a sign-up link will be sent after ticket purchase.

Don Lemon is the host of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon. As America’s only Black prime-time anchor, his daily monologues on racism and antiracism, on the failures of the Trump administration and of so many of our leaders, and on America’s systemic flaws speak for his millions of fans. Lemon was the leading voice on CNN guiding viewers through the death of George Floyd and a summer of nationwide protests and riots. Viewers also relied on his nightly coverage to guide them through a global pandemic.

Joy-Ann Reid is a political analyst for MSNBC and host of The ReidOut (weeknights 7 p.m. ET). She is the author of The New York Times bestseller The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story, as well as Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide and We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama, which she co-edited with Washington Postcolumnist E.J. Dionne. Reid also hosts the podcast “Reid This-Reid That” with veteran journalist Jacque Reid and a book podcast called “What to Reid”. She has worked in local and national TV news, talk radio and as a press secretary during two presidential campaigns. Reid and her husband Jason own a documentary film production company. They reside in Maryland and have three children.

This event is part of Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival’s special series of author events, Global Voices. See all of the talks here. The majority of the talks are free.

Any proceeds from the festival benefit parent organization, Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether, which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education and opportunity gaps in Essex County, NJ. You can read more about Succeed2gether and the festival at www.succeed2gether.org.