Eve Ewing

Eve Louise Ewing (born 1986) is an American sociologist, author, poet, and visual artist from Chicago, Illinois. Ewing is a tenured professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her academic research in the sociology of education includes her 2018 book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago. She is the former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches which was released in September 2017. In 2019, she published 1919, a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919. Additionally, Ewing is the author of the Ironheart comic book series for Marvel centered on the young heroine Riri Williams.

Early life and education

Ewing grew up in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. Her mother worked as a radio reporter and producer and her father an artist. Ewing attended Northside College Preparatory High School. She was a part of Young Chicago Authors.

Ewing attended the University of Chicago for college, where she received an undergraduate degree with honors in English Language & Literature from the University of Chicago, with a focus on African-American literature of the twentieth century. She earned a Master of Arts in Teaching in Elementary Education from Dominican University and taught middle school Language Arts in Chicago Public Schools before attending Harvard where she earned a Masters of Education in Education Policy and Management (2013), then a doctorate from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education (2016). At Harvard, Ewing served as editor and co-chair of the Harvard Educational Review.

Career

Ewing was a Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago, then became an assistant professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago in 2018. As of 2023, she is an Associate Professor Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity in the University of Chicago's Division of the Social Sciences. She also is on the UChicago Committee on Education.

Ewing is active in the Chicago community. She co-created and runs the Emerging Poets Incubator and Chicago Poetry Block Party. She also teaches with the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, a visual arts and humanities project that connects teaching artists and scholars to men at Stateville Maximum Security Prison. She is also on the Board of Directors of Massachusetts-based nonprofit MassLEAP, which builds and supports spaces for youth, artist-educators, and organizers to foster positive youth development through spoken-word poetry forums throughout Massachusetts.

Ewing is also one of the most popular sociologists on Twitter. Her Twitter account, operated as "Wikipedia Brown", drew 30 million views a month as of September 2017.

Scholarship

Ewing's academic research focuses on school closures. She earned a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, writing a dissertation on school closures in Chicago entitled "Shuttered Schools in the Black Metropolis: Race, History, and Discourse on Chicago's South Side." Her book on school closures, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, was released in October 2018 by the University of Chicago Press. Ghosts in the Schoolyard examines the demise of public schools in Chicago's Bronzeville district after the demolition of public housing, and analyzes community efforts to keep the schools open, including a community-wide hunger strike. In her book, Ewing introduces a concept called "institutional mourning", which refers to the multiple negative impacts experienced by the residents of areas where schools have been closed. According to The Chicago Reader, "she finds that school closures are a form of publicly sanctioned violence that not only derails black children's futures but also erases a community's past."

Ewing's work became especially poignant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ewing studied the impact of neighborhood, race, and socio-economics on student access to counselors and therapists, as well as their experiences with illnesses and deaths.

Writing

Ewing's writing includes poetry, prose and journalism, in addition to her academic scholarship. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Pamet River Prize for a first or second full-length book of poetry or prose by a female-identified or genderqueer author. ProPublica named her Seven Scribes article on the fight to save Chicago State University to its list of "The Best MuckReads on America's Troubled History With Race". Writing for The Huffington Post, Zeba Blay named Ewing's essay on Joshua Beal's death to a list of "30 Of The Most Important Articles By People Of Color In 2016." For NPR, Gene Demby praised Ewing's "moving essay...about the fight over the future of Dyett High in Chicago." In Chicago Magazine in 2017, Adam Morgan described her as one of the city's "most visible cultural icons." Ewing is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

Ewing has also drawn notice for her commentary on subjects like colorism, school choice, structural racism, federal arts funding, Frank Ocean and Harper Lee, race in publishing and in visual culture.

Much of Ewing's poetry covers similar topics as her scholarly work, such as the Black experience. For example, she discusses Black feminism through the Exodus in Electric Arches. Her poetry has been published in many venues, including Poetry Magazine, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Nation, the New Republic, Union Station, and the anthology The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop.

Ewing serves on the editorial board for In These Times, as co-director of arts organization Crescendo Literary, and as co-founder of the Echo Hotel poetry collective with Hanif Abdurraqib.

Electric Arches

Ewing's first book, a collection of poetry, prose, and visual art entitled Electric Arches, was published by Haymarket Books on September 12, 2017. Ewing has stated the entire book is based on real-life incidents that have happened to her.

Publishers Weekly named Electric Arches one of its most anticipated books of the fall of 2017 (selected from 14,000 new releases), calling it a "stunning debut". The Paris Review selected Electric Arches as a staff pick for the week on September 1, 2017, noting Ewing writes "trenchantly and tenderly" with "conversational...verse lulling the reader into territory that feels familiar, even when it isn't—into a world of 'Kool cigarette green,' 'lime popsicles,' and 'promised light.'" Writing for the Pacific Standard, Elizabeth King described Electric Arches as "at once a portrait of [Ewing's Chicago] home, a tender letter to black youth, and a call to her audience to think beyond the confines of systemic racism." The book won a 2018 Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association, the Chicago Review of Books 2017 poetry award, and the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award.

1919

1919 is a collection of poems and children's songs based on the stoning and resulting drowning of Eugene Williams in Lake Michigan and the ensuing Chicago race riot of 1919. 1919 has excerpts from "The Negro In Chicago: A Study On Race Relations And A Race Riot", a text commissioned by the city of Chicago and written in the aftermath of the riots as an attempt to understand how and why the events occurred and what could be done to ensure that race riots would never again occur. Excerpts from "The Negro in Chicago" are used at the top of Ewing's poems to provide additional context for her writing. 1919 was published in 2019 and was selected on NPRTemplate:'s Best Books of 2019, Chicago Tribune's Notable Books of 2019, Chicago Review of Books Best Poetry Book of 2019, O Magazine Best Books by Women of Summer 2019, The Millions Must-Read Poetry of June 2019, and LitHub Most Anticipated Reads of Summer 2019.

Children's books

In 2021, Penguin Random House published Maya and the Robot, written by Ewing and illustrated by Christine Almeda. It tells the story of an introverted fifth grader who finds a robot named Ralph, who helps her adapt to being in a classroom without her best friends.

In 2023, Ewing co-wrote the Young adult (genre) memoir Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game (Graphic Novel Memoir) with Colin Kaepernick.

Comics

Ewing is the current writer of the Marvel series Ironheart, the first issue of which was published November 2018. She has also written for Ms. Marvel, Marvel Team-Up, Champions, and Monica Rambeau. In 2023, she became the first Black female author of the Black Panther series.

Theater

In 2019, Manual Cinema premiered No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks by Crescendo Literary, made up of Ewing and Nate Marshall. This play was commissioned by the Poetry Foundation in honor of Brooks's centennial.

Visual art

In addition to her writing and research, Ewing is a visual artist. In 2016, she became the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Boston Children's Museum. Her installation "A Map Home" explored place and childhood exploration. The project became the subject of a short film by Rene Dongo and an episode of Coorain Lee's webseries, Coloring Coorain!

Ewing has also served as program and community manager at the Urbano Project, a youth arts and activism project in Boston, Massachusetts.

Podcast

Ewing launched a podcast called Bughouse Square in October 2018. Using archival footage of oral historian Studs Terkel in the beginning of each episode, Ewing then interviews a guest in a conversation with parallel themes. According to BroadwayWorld, "Compelling guest commentary and host insights bring to life the most provocative and compelling topics from Terkel's day and ours, and the series includes recorded conversations with such seminal figures as James Baldwin, Shel Silverstein, and Lorraine Hansberry, plus new exchanges with professors, authors, and cultural critics."

Personal life

Ewing is married to Damon Jones, an associate professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Awards and recognition

• 2016–2017 Distinguished Dissertation Award, American Educational Research Association
• 2017 Emerging Power Players, Chicago
• 2019 Twenty-First Century Award, Chicago Public Library Foundation
• 2020 Black Excellence Award, African American Arts Alliance, for literature
• 2020 Paul Engle Prize
• 2020 Distinguished Early Career Award, American Sociological Association Section on Children & Youth
• 2023 Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Activist Intellectual and Scholar Award

Recognition for Electric Arches

• 2017 Top Ten Books of the Year, Chicago Tribune
• 2017 CPL Top 10 Best Best Books of the Year, Chicago Public Library
• 2017 Best Poetry Book, Chicago Review of Books
• 2017 Best Books of 2017, NPR
• Earphones Award
• 2018 Alex Award, Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association
• 2018 Norma Farber First Book Award

Recognition for 1919

• 2019 Best Books of 2019, NPR
• 2019 Notable Books of 2019, Chicago Tribune
• 2019 Best Poetry Book of 2019, Chicago Review of Books
• 2019 Best Books by Women of Summer 2019, O Magazine
• 2019 Must-Read Poetry of June 2019, The Millions
• 2019 Most Anticipated Reads of Summer 2019, LitHub
• 2020 Best Poetry Book, Black Caucus of the American Library Association

Recognition for Ghosts in the Schoolyard

• 2020 Outstanding Ethnography in Education Book Award, University of Pennsylvania

External links

• Template:Official website
• Electric Arches at Haymarket Books
• PostBourgie podcast (September 21, 2015): "Episode 36: What It Means to Lose a School"
• WBEZ Chicago (August 31, 2015): "Dyett hunger strike enters third week"
• Eve L. Ewing papers at The Newberry