When Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black steps onto the stage at Chicago’s 40th Annual Printers Row Lit Fest this September, she will carry with her more than a Pulitzer Prize-winning book. She will bring the voices of hundreds of freedom seekers whose stories have long been buried in the footnotes of history.
A historian at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Fields-Black is the author of COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid and Black Freedom during the Civil War, which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History. The book sheds new light on Harriet Tubman’s role in leading the largest and most successful slave rebellion in United States history—the Combahee River Raid of June 1863.
“I’m excited to introduce COMBEE to Chicago readers for the first time,” she told me in a recent interview. “This will be COMBEE’s first trip to Chicago, and it’s wonderful to do so while celebrating the 40th anniversary of Printers Row Lit Fest.”…