Check out my new Gawker essay! I submitted it on a whim, and am super excited they published it. Please comment, share, and spread the word! --AL.

"Last week, I attended a screening of Ava DuVernay's Selma about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1965 voting rights marches of Alabama. 

Desperate for inspiration, fresh off my second rejection from Sundance Screenwriters Labs—this time, unlike last year's form letter, a lovely e-mail from the program director praising my "empathy" towards the story's characters—I took the subway uptown to the Academy Theater in Manhattan. 

A light rain fell as I pushed my way into a modern building at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, the East Coast home of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the lobby, a lone security guard manned the front desk while a mousy-haired woman handed attendees tickets to the post-screening dinner." 

-- Iquo B. Essien, Selma and the American-ness of the Academy