Tarana Burke, the founder of the explosive #MeToo movement, and bestselling “Bad Feminist” author Roxane Gay will be featured speakers and guests at this year’s Women of the World Baltimore festival, which will be held in April at Notre Dame of Maryland University, according to WOW Baltimore’s Facebook page.
Burke, who appeared in Time magazine as a “Person of the Year,” will participate in the one-day event’s opening keynote session on April 28. The activist’s movement, which she founded in 2006, reemerged and went viral last year amid rampant sexual misconduct allegations against male entertainment executives like Harvey Weinstein and received adamant support of female celebrities and survivors of sexual harassment and assault.
Gay will also be a featured guest on the festival’s main stage.
The festival, which was founded in the United Kingdom in 2011 and was last hosted in Baltimore in 2016, explores women’s issues and gender equity through a host of prominent speakers, performers, panelists, networking and mentoring events for women.
Past guests have included Jude Kelly, the founder of WOW; Deborah Phelps, the director of the education foundation of Baltimore County's public schools and mother of star Olympian Michael Phelps; and April Reign, creator of the viral hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.