Loyalty is incredibly excited to welcome back Akwaeke Emezi in conversation with Senthuran Varatharajah and Ann Daramola to celebrate Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation of any amount of your choice or you can order the book from our website to be added to the event's registration list. Donations will go to BLM DC. There will also be an option to snag the book during the event.

" One] of our greatest living writers." --Shondaland

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Harper's Bazaar, BuzzFeed, The Advocate, Lit Hub, Book Page, and Paperback Paris

A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times-bestselling author, "a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self." --Esquire

In three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal.

Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes their fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.

Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature; and Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation, they are based in liminal spaces.

Senthuran Varatharajah is a German novelist and philosopher of Tamil origin. Born in Jaffna, his family had to flee to Germany due to the civil war in Sri Lanka. His debut novel, Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen, was published in 2016 and won numerous literary awards, including the 3sat Prize, the Alfred Döblin Fellowship of the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Berlin Senate Fellowship, the Kranichsteiner Literaturförderpreis, the Bremer Literaturförderpreis, the Chamisso Award, and the Rauriser Literaturpreis. His second novel Rot (Hunger) will be published in spring 2022.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

Akwaeke Emezi with Senthuran Varatharajah and Ann Daramola for DEAR SENTHURAN