Brit Bennett will be in conversation with Carla Du Pree about her work.

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book Foundation’s 2016 5 Under 35 honorees.

Carla Du Pree serves as an arts ambassador, a literary consultant, the executive director of CityLit Project, and writes fiction. She’s received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Rhode Island Writers Colony for Writers of Color, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She’s a Rubys Artist and MSAC Individual Artist grantee, and was awarded NASAA’s 2020 inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Individual Award for demonstrating outstanding leadership addressing issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in Maryland. She is the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Leader for April 2020, and holds a Masters from The Johns Hopkins University.

Order your copy of The Vanishing Half from the Ivy Bookshop.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

DIAL-IN INFORMATION

Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://marylandlibraries.zoom.us/j/93099394235?pwd=U0VYM3d6S0xDdDJPa2Vq...
Passcode: 366870

Or Telephone:
Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
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Passcode: 366870
International numbers available: https://marylandlibraries.zoom.us/u/adzuFGsLkz

The conversation will also be broadcasted on the Enoch Pratt Free Library Facebook page.