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Open Book / Open Mind, Ayana Mathis, “The Unsettled”
February 3 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm EST
The event is free but registration is required. Doors open at 3:30 p.m. After the discussion, there will be a Q&A period and a book signing and sale with Watchung Booksellers.
Open Book / Open Mind is sponsored by Montclair Public Library Foundation, Watchung Booksellers, the New Jersey Council on Humanities, David and Mary Lee Jones, Rosemary Iversen and an anonymous donor. We are also grateful for the generous support of our in-kind sponsors, First Congregational Church of Montclair, The George, and Amanti Vino.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ayana Mathis‘s first novel, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” was a New York Times best seller, an NPR Best Book of 2013, the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the the New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and Rolling Stone. Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She was born in Philadelphia, and currently lives in New York City where she teaches writing in Hunter College’s MFA Program.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A searing multi-generational novel—set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama—about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival.
“[A] masterpiece . . . ‘The Unsettled’ is poised to be a significant addition to contemporary literature, affirming Mathis’s status as a gifted and influential voice in the literary world . . . An emotionally charged journey through the intricate tapestry of family, love, and the relentless pursuit of belonging.” —Essence magazine
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her previous books are “Searching for Zion” (2013), winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the cult classic novel, “The Professor’s Daughter” (2005). Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s essays have recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. She serves regularly as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.” She lives in the Bronx with her husband, the novelist Victor LaValle, and their two children.
CONTACT
