TomorrowTalks with Jemele Hill: Uphill

Arizona State University welcomes sports journalist Jemele Hill as a guest in its TomorrowTalks series. Hill will discuss her memoir "Uphill" (2022) in an online event on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023 at 6 p.m. Arizona / MST (5 p.m. PST / 7 p.m. CST / 8 p.m. EST). The conversation will be facilitated by ASU’s Aviva Dove-Viebahn, an assistant professor of film and media studies in the Department of English and a contributing editor at Ms. Magazine.

“Uphill” is an empowering, unabashedly bold memoir by journalist and former ESPN co-anchor Jemele Hill about overcoming a legacy of pain and forging a new path, no matter how uphill life’s battles might be.

Hill’s world came crashing down when she called President Trump a “white supremacist”; the White House wanted her fired from ESPN, and she was deluged with death threats. But Hill had faced tougher adversaries growing up in Detroit than a tweeting president. Beneath the exterior of one of the most recognizable journalists in America was a need—a calling—to break her family’s cycle of intergenerational trauma.

In Hill’s journey “Uphill,” she shares the whole story of her work, the women of her family, and her complicated relationship with God in an unapologetic, character-rich, and eloquent memoir.

Jemele Hill is the Emmy Award–winning former cohost of ESPN’s SportsCenter and 2018 NABJ Journalist of the Year. She is a contributing writer for the Atlantic, where she covers the intersection of sports, race, politics, and culture. She is also the producer of a Disney/ESPN documentary with Colin Kaepernick. Hill grew up in Detroit, graduated from Michigan State University, and now lives in Los Angeles.

TomorrowTalks place thought leaders of today in conversation with the changemakers of tomorrow: our students. Each distinguished speaker explains how they use writing to address our most pressing challenges. This year, the series talks with trailblazers; in addition to Hill, speakers included Jonathan Franzen (Oct. 5), Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Oct. 13), and Percival Everett (Nov. 3).

TomorrowTalks are a student-engagement initiative led by the Division of Humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU and hosted by ASU's Department of English in partnership with Macmillan Publishers.