Duke Charleston Welcomes You
As Duke welcomes our students back to campus, we hope you join fellow Blue Devils on Tuesday, September 29 for our Welcome to the City party! It’s a great opportunity to meet the local Duke community and learn about all that is happening right here.
This year’s party gives you a chance to celebrate Duke, build some new relationships, reconnect with friends, and meet your regional leaders who will be in attendance and can help answer your questions about ways to be engaged in the region and beyond.
Agenda
- 5:30pm - 8:30pm Social time in the taproom
- (Optional) 6:30pm - 7:15pm A dialog with Author Kevin Sack A.B.'81 about his Pulitzer Prize finalist book, Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church (Crown, June 2025).
- Kevin will talk about his book with Dr. Tonya Matthews B.S.E.'96, President and CEO of the International African American Museum.
- (Optional) 7:15pm - 8:30pm Distillery tours for small groups - including an extensive regional folk art collection displayed in the distillery.
Our hosts for this event are Ann Marshall A.B.'01 and Scott Blackwell, owners and operators of High Wire Distillery.
About our speaker
Kevin Sack is a veteran journalist who spent 30 years at The New York Times and has shared three Pulitzer Prizes for national and international reporting. A 1981 honors graduate of Duke University, he is the author of Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church (2025), a history of Emanuel AME Church before and after the 2015 massacre. The book was a 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalist and received numerous other honors, including being named one of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2025. Sack previously worked for the Los Angeles Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has taught journalism at Princeton University, and has reported extensively on race, health care, politics, and domestic affairs. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, he lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife, Dina, and serves on the board of the Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation.
There is no cost to attend this event, but please help our alumni volunteers plan accordingly by registering. Complimentary appetizers provided while they last!
Problem registering? Please try clearing your browsing history or email regional@daa.duke.edu.
Registrants will immediately receive a confirmation email. If you do not find it in your inbox,
- check your spam folder, as sometimes our event emails unfortunately end up here
- add regional@daa.duke.edu to your contacts.
Thanks!
Duke Charleston would like to thank the dedicated volunteer who made this event possible, Paul Freestone B.S.E.'88. We appreciate you!
If you would like to volunteer too, please click the "Get involved" tab on the menu above for more information.
Share and connect
Invite others in the Duke community to join us by sharing this event on social media or by passing along this link: https://rsvp.duke.edu/4vVla4
Update your Duke Alumni Network profile and follow/join Duke Charleston on Facebook to connect with each other and our vibrant and supportive Duke Charleston community.