As part of the I Am America series, writers Terese Marie Mailhot and Angela Flournoy discuss how we reckon with the historical legacies that are handed down to us, and how they become part of our personal stories. The event will be moderated by our executive director, Noreen Tomassi.
In her bestselling memoir Heart Berries, Mailhot looks at growing up on Seabird Island Indian Reservation in Canada. Flournoy’s novel The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, traces the story of generations of an African American family through their home on Detroit’s East Side.
Terese Marie Mailhot is from Seabird Island Band. She graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing appears in West Branch, Guernica, Pacific Standard, Elle, The LA Times, Longreads, Medium, and elsewhere. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Heart Berries: A Memoir. She serves as faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts and she's a Tecumseh Postdoctoral Fellow at Purdue University.
Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and aNew York Times Notable Book of the Year. The novel was also a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and an NAACP Image Award. She is a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree for 2015. Flournoy was the 2016-17 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She most recently taught at Princeton University.
About I Am America
This event is part of I Am America, a conversation series about what it means to be a part of these (sometimes) United States, presented by The Center for Fiction and The Greene Space at WNYC.
*Please note that all ticket sales are through WNYC. Thank you!
Venue: The Greene Space
44 Charlton Street, New York, NY
(corner of Varick Street)