Author Talk: Ed Taylor and Reagan Jackson discuss “The Power of the River”

About the Book:

From a former Gonzaga basketball player and current University of Washington Dean and Vice Provost comes a memoir steeped in the universal truths and human pursuits of love, grace, forgiveness, and continued growth.

Ed Taylor takes readers on a journey from Lompoc, California through a childhood marked with loss but grounded in the love and support of family and community, to a singular moment that changed everything for a boy set up by the system to be a cog in the machine.

But Taylor’s story is only beginning on the day Gonzaga University offers him a full ride: Faced with questions every young Black man on a basketball scholarship has heard—questions like “Do you even belong here?” and “Do you really think you can cut it?”—Taylor answers by examining himself, everything that brought him to this place, and all that he hopes to bring to the world, and by rising to the ever-increasing challenges he sets for himself.

In “The Power of the River,” Ed Taylor offers perspective on his journey as it relates to the larger, human one we’re all on together, inviting us to celebrate the many individuals—family members, teachers, coaches, colleagues, friends, and chance acquaintances—who lifted him up and taught him along the way and reminding us that even while we are responsible for our impacts on those in our lives, we all deserve some measure of grace.

Dr. Edward Taylor has been a friend, a colleague, a partner, a son, a father, a teacher, a student, and a fisher on the river of life, and here he shares what he knows of its power.

About the Speakers:

Ed Taylor is a former Gonzaga basketball player and current University of Washington Dean and Vice Provost.

Reagan E. J. Jackson (she/her) lives in Seattle, Washington and dedicates her time to being a writer, facilitator and a book doula. When she's not doing that she is likely traveling, cooking something delicious, soaking in the spa, frolicking on a beach, or practicing her ukulele.

Reagan is the author of “Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist,” which won a Bronze Medal in Creative Nonfiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (The Ippys) 2024. The author of three full-length poetry collections and two children’s books, Reagan brings heart, integrity, and joy to everything she creates. Her essays and reporting have appeared in the South Seattle Emerald, the Seattle Globalist, Yes! Magazine, the Black Girl Nerds Blog, Real Change News, and Crosscut. She has also been anthologized in “Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures,” “Fly to the Assemblies!: Seattle and the Rise of the Resistance,” and “Emerald Reflections: A South Seattle Anthology Volumes 1 and 2.”

Thanks to our sponsors  The Seattle Public Library Foundation  and  The Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation.

Thanks to media sponsor  The Seattle Times.

Free and reduced access supported by  4Culture.

Registration is required. Register  here.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

View in catalog: " The Power of the River " by Reagan E. J. Jackson.