Through short stories, novels, nonfiction, and poetry, National Book Award–honored authors Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Sabrina & Corina, 2019 Fiction Finalist) and Clint Smith (How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, 2021 Nonfiction Longlist) depict intergenerational stories of Indigenous, Latinx, and Black Americans. Join the authors for a conversation on the convergences and divergences of re-writing shared memory across genres. Moderated by Dolen Perkins-Valdez and presented in partnership with the Delaware Art Museum, Brevity Bookspace and the National Book Foundation. Masks will be required at this event.
Meet the authors at the DelArt Store for a special book signing following the conversation. This event is free to attend. Books will be available to purchase at the DelArt Store.
Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, one of the New York Times Top Ten Books of 2021, and Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review and elsewhere. Born and raised in New Orleans, he received his BA in English from Davidson College and his PhD in Education from Harvard University.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the author of the novel Woman of Light and the story collection Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, The Clark Prize, The Story Prize, the Saroyan International Prize, and winner of an American Book Award. She is the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her work has been honored with the Denver Mayor’s Award for Global Impact in the Arts and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Award. She has written for the New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O: the Oprah Magazine, The American Scholar, Boston Review, and elsewhere, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Tin House. Fajardo-Anstine earned her MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida. She is the 2022-2024 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels: Wench, Balm, and Take My Hand. Her short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, StorySouth, and elsewhere. Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.
