Author Brit Bennett Visits Live, April 14, at The Library Center
We have a unique opportunity to hear a New York Times bestselling author talk about her acclaimed book, “The Vanishing Half.”
Brit Bennett will visit, live, at 7 p.m. Thursday on the Library Center’s main floor in an interview-style presentation with another special guest, Dr. Ashley Payne. She is an educational psychologist and assistant professor in the psychology department at Missouri State University.
This free headline event of the Library’s One Read is sponsored by the Friends of the Library. Her books will be available for purchase and signing after this event.
Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half” was an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller, and was named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Vanity Fair and Time Magazine. Her debut novel, “The Mothers,” was also a New York Times bestseller.
“The Vanishing Half” is the emotional family story of identical twin sisters from a small, southern Black community who run away at age 16. As adults, they choose very different lives: One sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband, family and friends know nothing of her past. The fates of the twins remain intertwined as their own daughters’ lives intersect.
Born and raised in Southern California, Ms. Bennett earned her Master of Fine Arts in fiction at the University of Michigan. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.
Guest interviewer Dr. Payne is the creator and program director of the “Black Girl Talks: Hip Hop, Social Media, and Empowerment” mentoring program in Springfield, and the “Black Girl Talks” podcast premieres this summer.
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