GrubStreet's Light Up the Center event this year on Thursday, November 2nd, will be a lively in-person gathering with performances, food and drinks. A community celebration dedicated to the theme of working for equity across the arts, it will feature performances by Boston-based artists from diverse disciplines, like educator and writer Fiona Maurissette.

We recently caught up with Fiona to ask her what guides her practice as an artist, why she's excited about joining our Light Up the Center event, her favorite book of all time, and more.

GrubStreet: What is most exciting to you about participating in this multidisciplinary event surrounding social and racial justice? Why is coming together to witness these important works and conversation at GrubStreet meaningful and urgent?

Fiona Maurissette: It's exciting because it shows how much the community cares about these issues. It's exciting because art is being centered in a way that reminds us that justice would require incorporating joy and healing.

GS: Why is coming together to witness these important works and conversation at GrubStreet meaningful and urgent?

FM: It's urgent because it's needed. We need to be reminded that art has always been part of activism. Our work remains when we are gone; to tell the people in the future that we were thinking of them. We are doing this so that they will exist in a better society than the one we have.

GS: Do you have a favorite book of all time?

FM: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. She was preparing us for something that some folks didn't take seriously until recently.

GS: What are you currently reading and/or listening to?

FM: I'm reading as many books by Black womxn as possible. I just finished watching Twisted Metal on Peacock. I won't spoil it, but it seemed too realistic. I'm always listening to Janelle Monáe.

Learn more and reserve your tickets for Light Up the Center today!