Screening of "In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters" and Q&A with filmmaker Leslie Askew

UGA hosts a screening and discussion of In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters, a new, 35-minute documentary about America’s first published Black poet. Produced by Askew Pictures, the film illuminates a largely overlooked chapter of Wheatley Peters’ story: her marriage to John Peters and the radical choices she made in pursuit of autonomy, dignity, and love.

Writer and director Leslie Askew will attend the screening and participate in a discussion. Askew is an award-recognized television producer and documentary director with over twenty years of experience working across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. She is the founder of Askew Pictures, an independent documentary studio focused on history, culture, and social-impact storytelling. Her recent projects include Pignorant, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, and Harvesting Justice, a documentary series examining food justice and grassroots activism, set to air on PBS in 2026. Her work has been commissioned by major broadcasters, including CNN, ITV (UK), SBS (Australia), Al Jazeera, CBS, BET, and PBS.

This event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the department of history, the department of English Ballew Lecture Fund, the Georgia Colloquium in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature, the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, the Institute for African American Studies, the UGA Arts Collaborative, the UGA Special Collections Libraries, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Athens Branch of the ASALH (Association for the Study of African American Life and History), and the African American Genealogy Shared Interest Group of the Clarke Oconee Counties Genealogy Society.

Please park at the Hull Street Deck, the Tate Center, or other visitor parking.