Apr
7
10:00pm
Morowa Yejidé and Jeffery Renard Allen for CREATURES OF PASSAGE
By Loyalty Bookstores
Loyalty is so excited to welcome Morowa Yejidé and Jeffery Renard Allen in conversation for the release of Creatures of Passage! 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 a copy of Creatures of Passagefrom our website to be added to the event's registration list. Donations will go to Black Lives Matter DC. There will also be an option to snag the book during the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
With echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Yejid 's novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington, DC, and the ghosts that haunt it.
"In its luminous prose, and its nods to mysticism and myth, the novel brings to mind the best of Toni Morrison. It's that good."
--Washington Post, One of the Best Books about Washington, DC, recommended by George Pelecanos
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.
Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash--reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw--has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man."
When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face what frightens her most.
Morowa Yejid 's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim itself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Morowa Yejidé, a native of Washington, DC, is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Time of the Locust, which was a 2012 finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize, long-listed for the 2015 PEN/Bingham Prize, and a 2015 NAACP Image Award nominee. She lives in the DC area with her husband and three sons. Creatures of Passage is her second novel.
ABOUT THE IN CONVERSATION PARTNER
Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of five books including the novels Song of the Shank and Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune‘s Heartland Prize for Fiction; the short story collection Holding Pattern, which received The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence; and two collections of poetry. Allen is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a grant in Innovative Literature from the Creative Capital Foundation, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.
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