WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY’s

DANCERS ON THE SHORE PODCAST

Based on William Melvin Kelley’s 1964 short story collection, Dancers on the Shore is an anthology series exploring the lives of Black families in Harlem and the Bronx. The series draws from Kelley’s original sixteen stories about three families: the Careys, the Dunfords and the Bedlows–some interlinked and spanning generations from the Reconstruction-era South to 1980s New York–as well as additional works he published elsewhere. Adapted and directed by Yhane Washington Smith, story editing by Jesi Kelley, and produced by The Family Eye. The theme son “Through the Fire” is produced by Rikko 009.

PLAY SEASON ONE

“There’s cleverness and craft in abundance here.
Also, wisdom and even warmth.”

–Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

An odyssey through time in which past and future combine and re-combine to give the arc of a full life, by the “brilliant” (The New Yorker) author of A Different Drummer.

Order Dis//integration

WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY

“[A] lost giant of American literature.” —The New Yorker

Born in New York City in 1937 and raised in the Bronx NY, Kelley attended the Fieldston School and Harvard. The author of five novels and a short story collection, he was a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and taught at The New School and Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement and the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing. He died in 2017.

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