This event takes place in person at Charis and on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance.

Charis welcomes Kendra Allen in conversation with Kelsey L. Smoot to celebrate Good Morning Means I Love You, a searing story of a young Texan woman and the family she makes with two men.

In her arresting first novel, Kendra Allen investigates love, partnership, motherhood, pleasure and the pursuit of freedom in one young woman’s defiantly unconventional terms. Rae has just returned to her family after leaving for a stretch and suddenly – that family being her two male partners and the sons, named Morning and Night, that she has mothered with each of them. In the span of one year, they will experience unfathomable depths of devastation—and joys they could never predict.

Good Morning Means I Love You follows Rae as she makes choices around sex, mothering, and partnership that are as stunning to everyone else as they are natural to herself. With pain and pleasure, she watches as her children learn to walk and give language to the world as her lovers contend with their own ideas of masculinity, personhood, and fatherhood. Along the way, Rae begins to understand the hardest and most beautiful truth: that we have only so much time on earth to make love, to make family, and to make good on the promise of this one, short life.

This is a novel of the self in all its simultaneities and a living portrait of intimacy written in poetic, bold, and sensual prose that shines a light on what it means to redefine expectation.

Kendra Allen is the author of the memoir Fruit Punch, the poetry collection The Collection Plate, and the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, which won the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She writes to music column “Make Love in My Car” for Southwest Review. She was born and raised in Dallas.

Dr. Kelsey L. Smoot (he/they/Kelz) is a gender theorist, an elective Southerner, a writer, and a poet. His autoethnographic style has become the lens through which he understands and reflects on his experience navigating the US sociopolitical landscape. Currently, Kelz serves as an Assistant Managing Editor at Sundress Publications. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Spring Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, and the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest. Kelz  is a Tin House Workshop alum, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee,  and a Best New Poets nominee. Proudly, he is also the author of two chapbooks: we was bois together with CLASH! (An Imprint of Mouthfeel Press) and Muse, with Another New Calligraphy. Thrillingly, Kelz’s debut full-length collection of poems, SOULMATE AS A VERB, was released early 2026 with DOPAMINE/Semiotext(e).

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person at the event.

Charis Books is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on site van accessible parking, two ramps, and additional overflow accessible parking nearby. Additional accessibility information can be found on the Accessibility page of our website.

Please read the in-person event guidelines below to be sure you can participate in the event.

All attendees must wear a face mask during the event.

We will begin seating people at 7:00 PM ET.

This event will be live-streamed via Crowdcast. 

As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact info@charisbooksandmore.com or call the store at 404-524-0304.

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.

By attending our event, whether in person or virtually, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.

Good Morning Means I Love You: Kendra Allen in conversation with Kelsey L. Smoot