Jul
27
11:00pm
Lauren Francis-Sharma on Book of the Little Axe with Krystal Sital
By Kweli Journal
“Book of the Little Axe is an epic novel that recreates the hybrid history of Native and African peoples during the era of American exploration and expansion. Lauren Francis-Sharma's care for her characters and skill with her subject shine through every page.”―Laila Lalami, author of The Other Americans
“They say the past is a foreign country but forget to mention that it's also wild. Book of the Little Axe reminds us. Ranging from Trinidad to the mountainous West, Lauren Francis-Sharma has woven an emotional, immediate, ambitious story of love and belonging. Rather than retell a story of first contact between native people and newcomers to the new world, Francis-Sharma has produced a deeply moving novel about the ways in which all of us have always been connected.”―David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of Book of the Little Axe and 'Til the Well Runs Dry, her first novel, which was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Lauren is a contributor to Marita Golden’s anthology, Us Against Alzheimer’s, and her more recent work can be found at ElectricLit.com, Barrelhouse.com and The Lily. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan Law School. She is also a MacDowell Fellow and the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.
Krystal Sital is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad. A PEN Award finalist and Hertog Fellow, she holds an MFA from Hunter College. Her work has appeared in ELLE, The New York Times, Salon, Today’s Parent, Catapult, LitHub, The Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere. Her essays have been anthologized in A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home; and Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences in the Trump Era. She now teaches in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University in Lake Tahoe.
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