Bay Area friends—I’m delighted to be in conversation with Sunny A. Smith at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco this Saturday for the celebration of their The Compass Rose catalog, which memorializes their striking show about ancestors and objects and legacies passed down. We spoke together for the catalog itself, and I’m eager to continue the conversation in person. Join us if you’d like. 🍂✨
I’ll be at the Brattleboro Lit Fest, in Vermont, and the Lost Weekend Festival, in Baltimore, later this month. Hope to see you!
Over the past century, my family has given an enormous amount of money to extreme evangelical Christian preachers, back to my great-grandmother in Dallas, who was so poor afterward that she couldn’t buy food or firewood. Nowadays, my mom and stepfather also get their “news” from Kenneth Copeland’s Christian nationalist Victory Channel. Copeland is the preacher with three private jets who asked his supporters for donations so that he didn’t have to fly with “demons” on commercial air travel. Recent guests include Lauren Boebert and the former president.
One of my strongest hopes in writing Ancestor Trouble was that it might help some people feel less marooned with their own ancestor troubles. So you can imagine how touched and floored I was to find the book listed in The Atlantic by Tajja Isen—a writer and editor I deeply admire—as one of “Six Books That Will Make You You Feel Less Alone,” alongside great books like Saeed Jones’ Alive at the End of the World and others I need to read.