Mitchell S. Jackson and Reggie Bailey for FLY *IN-PERSON*

Loyalty is so excited to welcome Mitchell S. Jackson in conversation with Reggie Bailey for an IN-PERSON event celebrating the release of Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion! Join us at Loyalty's Petworth store at 7 PM ET on Wednesday, September 27th for a discussion and audience Q&A, followed by a meet + greet & book signing! This event is free to attend but RSVPs are required—please use the form below. **Face masks are required for all attendees in the event space.** Please email events@loyaltybookstores.com with any questions.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Equal parts stunning, photo-rich lookbook, and cultural commentary, Fly is the story of the extraordinary intersection of high fashion and basketball. Each chapter explores the style of an era and the cultural influences that shaped it: The league’s inception in 1949, pre-Civil Rights Movement, when the NBA was mostly comprised of white players who wore suits and skinny ties. The years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the birth of funk and R&B when basketball fashion got flashier (think Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain wearing fur coats and big hats). The Michael Jordan era of the 1980s and 1990s, with its oversize suits. The epic Iverson/Hip-Hop years of the late 1990s and early 2000s. And now to today, a time defined not only by social media and high fashion’s birthing of the tunnel walk (think LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Russell Westbrook), but one in which athletes are idealized as style icons and activists, figures who inspire conversations beyond how they play and what they wear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson’s debut novel, The Residue Years, won a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His essay collection Survival Math was named a best book of 2019 by fifteen publications. Jackson’s other honors include fellowships, grants, and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, the Lannan Foundation, PEN America, and TED. His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Time, and Esquire, as well as in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, the Paris Review, the Guardian, and elsewhere. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Esquire. He holds the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professorship in the Department of English at Arizona State University.

ABOUT THE IN CONVERSATION PARTNER

Reggie Bailey is the co-founder and Executive Producer of Books Are Pop Culture, the talk show that asks the questions pop culture deserves to the authors who create it. A literary citizen who believes that books are a form of entertainment that should occupy the same space in our cultural lexicon as film, television, music, video games & fashion.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during virtual or in-person events.