Bethune House in Washington, DC
2026-03-28 13:00 - 14:30 UTC | Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, 1318 Vermont Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, United States
In celebration of Women’s History Month, join us as journalist and author A’Lelia Bundles discusses her latest book—Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. During the 1920s, A’Lelia Walker (daughter of Madam C.J. Walker) was an internationally famous heiress whose glamorous soirees were so memorable that poet Langston Hughes dubbed her “the joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s.” Long overshadowed by her mother’s legacy, A’Lelia Walker’s radiant personality, impresario instincts and international travels are brought to life through her voluminous personal correspondence and a trove of archival research. Books will be available for purchase in the site bookstore.
Reservations are required. Email BethuneNHS@nps.gov.
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Family Ties Panel at Massachusetts Historical Society (IN PERSON & VIRTUAL)
2026-04-28 17:00 - 18:15 | Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, 02215, United States
A’Lelia will join biographers Jeffrey Boutwell and Hester Kaplan — who also have written about family members — on a panel moderated by Pulitzer Prize winner Megan Marshall.
The event is hybrid and free of charge. An in-person reception will begin at 4:15 PM.
Click here to register
From the MHS website: This panel discussion brings together three American subjects from different eras and professions: George Boutwell, 19th century Massachusetts politician; A’Lelia Walker, Progressive Era business woman and arts patron; Justin Kaplan, prize-winning 20th century biographer of Twain and Whitman. What do their biographies have in common? Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy was written by a distant cousin; Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance by a great-granddaughter; and Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography by a daughter. How does the “necessary entwinement”—Hester Kaplan’s phrase for the binding of biographer to subject—alter, how does it feel, when the subject is a family member? Learn about three remarkable, impactful lives, and the writing lives of their biographer relatives.

Washington Writers Conference in Bethesda, MD
2026-05-02 15:00 - 16:00 | Bethesda North Marriott Hotel, 5701 Marinelli Road, Rockville, DC, United States
Panel: “Your Story, Your Way”
You have a tale to tell, your own or one that’s been in your family for years, but how should you tell it? In this panel, moderator Tre Johnson (Black Genius) talks to A’Lelia Bundles (Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance), Jeannie Vanasco (The Glass Eye), and Jennifer Bort Yacovissi (Up the Hill to Home) about finding the right genre for your unique project.
Don’t miss your chance to hear from these and other pros during the 2026 Washington Writers Conference on May 1-2 in Rockville, MD. Click here to REGISTER NOW!

Joy Goddess at Kansas City Public Library (In Person & on YouTube)
2026-05-21 17:30 - 19:30 | Kansas City Public Library, 14 W. 10th Street, Kansas City, MO, United States
Join the Kansas City Public Library for an inspiring evening celebrating the life and legacy of A’Lelia Walker, the “Joy Goddess of Harlem’s 1920s.”
Author A’Lelia Bundles will share insights from her latest biography, exploring the lasting influence of the Walker family from St. Louis to the Harlem Renaissance and their impact on the arts, civil rights, and women’s suffrage.
Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Program: 6:00 p.m.
Book signing to follow
Free validated parking available
Attend in person or watch live at youtube.com/kclibrary.
This program is cosponsored by the Greater Kansas City Chapters of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, the Greater Kansas City Black History Study Group (ASALH), and E La Mars Cosmetology and Barber College, with funding support from the Health Forward Foundation.

Biographers International Conference in New York
2026-05-29 10:00 - 11:30 | Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, United States
PANEL: In the Right Hands: Biographers as Collectors
Biographers can support their research by collecting important related material often overlooked on the market or in storerooms and unavailable in any repository or online. This panel will explore what authors have purchased, inherited, or been given, whether books, manuscripts, periodicals, ephemera, artworks, textiles, or objects, produced or owned by or pertaining to the biography subjects. The panelists will illustrate and illuminate the value of what they acquired, sometimes in the most unexpected places and at the last minute, and will discuss how items shaped their biography narratives and shed light on pivotal moments in their subjects’ lives and careers. The session will also cover how those materials can be transferred to institutional collections for safekeeping.
Moderator
A’Lelia Bundles is the author of Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, a biography of her great-grandmother, and On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother. Her books have benefited from the voluminous Walker Company documents that her family donated to the Indiana Historical Society in the early 1980s. To organize and preserve another trove of materials inherited from her grandparents, she founded the Madam Walker Family Archives, the largest private collection of Walker ephemera, photographs, and correspondence. She serves on several nonprofit boards and was a producer and executive during her 30-year career in network television news.
Panelists
Eve M. Kahn, an independent scholar and regular New York Times contributor, has written two biographies that have resulted in boxfuls of important primary source material tucked away in her home. She has thousands of pages of circa-1900 correspondence that inspired her 2019 book about the forgotten artist Mary Rogers Williams (1857-1907), as well as rare periodicals, inscribed books, photos, ephemera, and even restaurant cutlery related her 2025 book about the writer, publisher and social justice activist Zoe Anderson Norris (1860-1914).
Richard Kopley, Distinguished Professor emeritus of English at Penn State DuBois, is the author of Edgar Allan Poe: A Life (University of Virginia Press, 2025). The book is informed by Kopley’s extraordinary archive of letters about Poe by Flora Lapham Mack, the stepdaughter of Poe’s best friend, John H. Mackenzie. Kopley is also the author of The Threads of “The Scarlet Letter”: A Study of Hawthorne’s Transformative Art (University of Delaware Press, 2003), Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), and The Formal Center in Literature: Explorations from Poe to the Present (Camden House, 2018). Former president of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society and the Poe Studies Association, he is the first recipient of the PSA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Kopley served as a Fulbright Specialist and a Virginia Humanities Fellow, and he recently became a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Jared Stearns is the author of Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers (Headpress, 2024). He has built the largest known collection of Chambers memorabilia, spanning personal papers, photographs, contracts, film, periodicals, ephemera, and even clothing. He has written about Chambers for publications such as Cineaste, The Dark Side, and The San Franciscan. His work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. He is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston. He’s working on his next biography.

Wednesday Morning Group in Bethesda
2026-06-17 09:30 - 11:00 | Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, Bethesda, MD, United States
A’Lelia Bundles returns to WMG to discuss her biography of her charismatic great-grandmother,
Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. A‘Lelia Walker, best known as the
only daughter of hair care entrepreneur, Madam C. J. Walker (whom Bundles memorialized
earlier in On Her Own Ground), was a businesswoman and convener in her own right, whose
glamorous soirees were so memorable that poet Langston Hughes dubbed her “the joy goddess
of Harlem’s 1920s.” This illustrated presentation features archival family photographs and stories of the Dark Tower cultural salon where celebrities such as Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson and Alberta Hunter gathered.
Members only event

Joy Goddess August and September 2026 Events
2026-08-01

Peoria Riverfront Museum
2026-08-08 - 2026-08-09 | Peoria Riverfront Museum, 222 SW Water St, Peoria, IL, United States
As part of the Joyful Resistance exhibition, A’Lelia will talk about Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance and the items from her Madam Walker Family Archives that are on display in the exhibition at a Saturday Members Only session and on Sunday in a public talk.

Martha's Vineyard Black Book Festival
2026-08-15 12:00 - 17:00 | Island Conference Center, 30 Island Inn Road, Oak Bluffs, MA, United States
A’Lelia will talk about Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance at the Martha’s Vineyard Black Book Festival.

Edgartown Books 8/16/2026
2026-08-16 11:00 - 13:00 | Edgartown Books, 44 Main Street, Edgartown, MA, United States
A’Lelia will sign copies of Joy Goddess and On Her Own Ground at Edgartown Books.

Mississippi Book Festival 9/26/2026
2026-09-26 09:00 - 17:00 | Mississippi State Capitol Complex, 400 High Street, Jackson, MS, 39201, United States
A’Lelia speaks her books — Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance and On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker — at the Mississippi Book Festival on Saturday, September 26
Mississippi Book Festival
