Jasmin Graham, who speaks at Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida on July 21, 2024. Credit: Photo via SafinaCenter/Twitter

From fishing videos to marine biology, melanated folks don’t have a lot of people who look like them running the show.

While Jasmin Graham would love to just be a great scientist and do biology without any extra weight or burden, she—along with a trio of other Black female shark researchers, Amani Webber-Schultz, Carlee Jackson and Jaida Elcock—launched Minorities in Shark Sciences in 2021 and haven’t looked back. The group now boasts over 500 members.

“We just want to let other women of color know that they’re not alone and that they’re not weird for wanting to do this. And they’re not less feminine for wanting to do this. They’re not less Black or Indigenous or Latina for wanting to do this and that they can have their whole identities and be a scientist and study sharks,” Graham, who currently specializes in smalltooth sawfish and hammerhead sharks, told NPR. “And those things are not mutually exclusive.”

Her new book, “Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist” is an inspiring, quick, read framed around sea creatures that’ve called Earth come for more than 400 million years, but the fish’s survival and evolution story intersects with Graham’s narrative in a way that teaches the reader a lot about their own humanity, too. She speaks to fans in her hometown, which she relocated to after being burned out, for this Sunday conversation.

TIckets to the “Shark’s Don’t Sink” author talk with Jasmin Graham on Sunday, July 21. at Oxford Exchange start at $5, with signed copies on sale for $28.

Graham is also at St. Petersburg’s Tombolo Books on Tuesday, July 30.

Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2024.