Library Live

Jesmyn Ward in Conversation
2018-04-27 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Performance Space
‘Jesmyn Ward digs deep into the not-buried heart of the American nightmare. A must read.’ Margaret Atwood
Manchester Literature Festival are thrilled to present a rare UK event with acclaimed American author Jesmyn Ward. Based in Mississippi, Jesmyn is the author of the memoir Men We Reaped and the novels Salvage the Bones, Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied, Sing. She is also the editor of The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, which brings together 18 influential writers to ‘wrestle with the past, present and future of American race relations and the black experience.’
Championed by Marlon James, Jon McGregor and Ann Patchett, Jesmyn’s new novel Sing, Unburied,Sing recently won the prestigious 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. An urgent and atmospheric novel set in the deep South, it’s an epic tale of hope, struggle, race, poverty and loss. It’s also an intimate story of family and the legacies of love, violence and belonging that we pass on to our children. To quote Celeste Ng: ‘Read Sing, Unburied, Sing and you’ll feel the immense weight of history – and the immense strength it takes to persevere in the face of it… It’s hard to imagine a more necessary book for this political time.’
Join us to see why Jesmyn Ward is regarded as one of the most important writers in America today, regularly drawing comparisons to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison.
Hosted by arts journalist and author Anita Sethi and presented in partnership with the Centre for New Writing Doors open at 6.30pm, event starts at 7pm
