Irvin is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, a BA from Morehouse College and has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.
His book, In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space (January 2025), is a stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces, from a captivating new literary voice.
“A moving examination of controversial public monuments that confronts our nation’s troubled past. . . . Weathersby writes with passion and clarity about the shameful history of chattel slavery, racial segregation, anti-Black violence, the brutal conquest of Native Americans, and the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, weaving this history of racial humiliation and oppression into his contemporary observations about the importance of monumentality and public art. . . . A spirited and often poetic treatment of an important and timely topic.” — Kirkus Reviews