MARCH 17, 2019 – DETROIT For immediate releaseMany people have mental health issues, but who wants to get up on stage and talk about them? LLSM is launching its inaugural Concinnity Series, Conversations with Artists, with a book-signing and conversation with author former Detroit Free Press copy editor and O Street Columnist Oneita Jackson at 6:00 p.m. Thursday, April 11, 2019, at The Corner Ballpark on the site of historic Tiger Stadium. $35
The Concinnity Series was conceived, LLSM Founder Curtis Longs, M.D. says, “because of the issues in the black community that people are afraid to talk about. (Its name is derived from the meaning of the word “concinnity”: the skillful and harmonious fitting together of different parts.) There is a stigma, noted most recently and famously by [Golden Globe winner] Taraji P. Henson, who reportedly said she could not find adequate mental health care for her son.” This conversation is a precursor to the May event during Mental Health Awareness Month. “Our primary focus has been on musical geniuses who may have had mental health issues, and expanded into other artists, authors and other creative people who have experienced mental health challenges.” Dr. Longs says. “We decided to begin this series with Oneita because she is a fascinating individual, one, she has been one of the most influential literary voices in Detroit, two, and she is unafraid to share the mental health challenges she has dealt with, which she even wrote about in her column. “I used to receive letters from newspaper readers concerned about why I was talking about things we did not usually share in the African-American community,” Jackson said. A satirist known for her unabashed truth and perspicacious observations, Jackson is expected to speak out for the first time about why she abruptly quit the Detroit Free Press in 2012 and started driving a taxicab. “It had to do with my state of mind and well-being,” she says. She will read from her critically acclaimed books Letters from Mrs. Grundy and Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome. Books will be available for signing.
Dr. Michele Leno, psychologist and cohost of WADL TV-38’s “3-D View Talk,” will be in conversation with Jackson.
ABOUT THIS SERIES: LLSM is hosting four conversations with people in the visual, literary, and performing arts. The event cost is $35, which includes light appetizers by Celebrity Chef Maxcel Hardy. The next event—this is the first of four in 2019, will be held in May 2019
ABOUT LLSM: The not-for-profit organization of professionals from psychiatry, psychology, social work, and law, was founded in 2017. It is a 501(c )(3) organization dedicated to helping artists in the urban community deal with mental and behavioral health issues in eclectic and inventive ways. Its goals are to improve mental health in the urban community and obliterate the counterproductive stigmas associated with it.
Contact: Charlene Mitchell-Rodgers Media Consultants, cmitch03@comcast.net, 248-789-3871
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