A leading voice in the legacy and importance of Black agriculture and land ownership will headline Rural Assembly Everywhere, the annual virtual gathering of the Rural Assembly.
Award-winning author Natalie Baszile will participate in the keynote conversation to be broadcast during the event on Sept. 17.
Everywhere 2025 will celebrate the theme, “A Bigger Pie: Cultivating Abundance in a Time of Scarcity”. This theme is highlighted in Baszile’s most recent work, We are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land & Legacy.
“We are thrilled to welcome Natalie to our Everywhere stage and look forward to a conversation about how cultivating Black landownership and the next generation of farmers supports a generational legacy of Black agriculture in rural America,” said Rural Assembly Director Madeline Matson.
Baszile’s compendium uplifts and brings together a wide range of voices and traditions to examine Black people’s connection to land and agriculture in America despite systematic discrimination. Her work provides insight not only around the hardships endured and lasting impacts over generations but also the joy and power built around Black ownership and legacy tied to soil.
In her book, Natalie brings together essays, poems, conversations, portraits, and first-person narratives to tell the story of Black people’s connection to the land from Emancipation to the present. We Are Each Other’s Harvest is an Amazon Editor’s Pick and was a Wall Street Journal Book of the Year, 2021.
A native Californian, Baszile’s southern roots stem from Louisiana, South Carolina, and Alabama. Her maternal Great-great grandfather, Mac Hall (b. 1845) was a farmer, merchant and beekeeper. Natalie’s passion for the stories of Black farmers and land stewards comes from a desire to shift the narrative around agriculture, farming, and labor.
She is also the author of the novel Queen Sugar, which was adapted for seven television seasons by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
Her non-fiction essays have appeared in National Geographic, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She has taught fiction at Saint Mary’s College and Sierra Nevada University.
Baszile has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. She has had residencies at Ragdale Foundation, VCCA, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi where she was the SFFILM and Bonnie Rattner Fellow.
About Rural Assembly Everywhere
Rural Assembly Everywhere is the annual virtual gathering of the Rural Assembly, a program of the Center for Rural Strategies. The virtual broadcast features speakers, conversations, music, and other elements of rural culture. Now in its fifth year as a virtual gathering, Rural Assembly Everywhere brings together people from across the country who care deeply about their rural places, neighbors, and community issues.
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