The School of Letters and the Roberson Project present Hannah Palmer, L'11, for a lecture, "How to Tend to a Ghost Pool" on Monday, February 16, at 7 p.m. in Convocation Hall.
We’re always delighted when Sewanee School of Letters alumni can return to campus to talk about their book publications and projects, so we’re pleased to invite you to a lecture on Feb. 16 with Hannah Palmer, L'11, sponsored by the Sewanee School of Letters and the Roberson Project.
Palmer is a writer and artist from the southside of Atlanta. Through essays, memoir, and public art projects, she explores the hidden histories and wildness that shape our lives in the urban landscape. Her award-winning memoir Flight Path: A Search for Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport (2017) was included on Atlanta Magazine’s list of “essential books that explain today’s Atlanta.” Palmer’s newest book, The Pool Is Closed: Segregation, Summertime, and the Search for a Place to Swim (2024) considers her neighborhood “ghost pools” in the context of investment and disinvestment in public parks and infrastructure throughout the 20th Century. John Jeremiah Sullivan describes Palmer as “[having] one of the most interesting brains in the new crop of writers who are re-examining the psycho-geography of the South. She has moved from airports and lost neighborhoods to pools but continues to ask deeper questions about the power grids that mark the landscape."
Palmer’s lecture, “How To Tend To A Ghost Pool,” will be in Convocation Hall at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 16. This event is co-sponsored by the Sewanee School of Letters and the Roberson Project and is free and open to the public. Palmer will also be co-hosting the “Swim Pool Workshop,” also hosted by the Roberson Project, alongside Colby Caldwell, a photographer from North Carolina whose work has been on display both nationally and internationally since 1988. At this talk, Palmer will explore the historical context of Sewanee’s segregated Swim Pool and the significance of the Roberson Project’s effort to revisit and memorialize it. The project asks the question, “What is the cost of revisiting these lost pools and what is the benefit?” This event is also free and open to the public. For more information about the event and the work the Roberson Project has done to help preserve the site, please visit their website here.
