Grant Bailie and Dedra Johnson

Description

Join Dedra Johnson and Grant Bailie

as they read from their works

Sandrine's Letter To Tomorrow
by Dedra Johnson

and

Mortarville
by Grant Bailie

Re: Sandrine's Letter To Tomorrow
Despite being a straight-A student and voracious reader, eight-year old Sandrine Miller is treated as little more than a servant by her mother, who forces Sandrine to clean house, do chores and take care of her younger half sister, Yolanda. On top of the despair of her life at home, Sandrine must confront growing up against the harshness of life in 1970s-era New Orleans, where men in cars follow her home from school and she is ostracized because she is a light-skinned black girl. The only refuge Sandrine has against her bleak world is spending summers with her beloved grandmother, Mamalita. After Mamalita’s death, Sandrine realizes that she must escape from her mother, from New Orleans, from everything she has known, if she is to have any kind of future. In the tradition of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple, SANDRINE'S LETTER TO TOMORROW is a brilliant debut from an important new African-American voice in literary fiction.

A native and current resident of New Orleans, Dedra Johnson received her MFA from the University of Florida, where she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. SANDRINE'S LETTER TO TOMORROWwas a runner-up for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Awardin 2006.

Re: Mortartville
Mortarville tells the story of a man named “John Smith,” ordinary in every way except for one: he was born from a test tube. With this richly imaginative premise, Grant Bailie takes us on an incredible journey through John’s life, from a childhood spent in a secret underground government facility with other test-tube boys, who are prepared for life in the outside world by reading comic books and watching television shows, to his bond with a gorilla named Abigail. After John’s fellow artificial inmates riot and destroy their underground home, John, now an adult, takes up residence in Mortarville, a decaying industrial city, where he lives the most mundane of existences, working a job as head of security in a mall. However, no matter how hard he tries to fit in to the real world, John cannot shake his past, and in the end, it is that past which literally carries him away. An amazing and fantastical work that marries the innocence of Pinocchio with the futuristic horror of Brave New World, MORTARVILLE explores the fundamental question of what it means to be human in a world that is losing its humanity.

Grant Baile’s first novel, CLOUD 8, was called “mad, fascinating, and really quite moving” by Kirkus Reviews, and “tender and introspective” by Boston’s Weekly Dig. A resident of Cleveland, Grant’s short fiction has been published in numerous places both print and online, including McSweeney’s. Grant’s work has been selected for honors by the Writer's & Poets League of Greater Cleveland, and in 2005, he participated in the widely heralded Novel: A Living Installation at Flux Factory, which was reviewed by the New York Times, The New Yorker and The Village Voice.

More Info

Link

http://www.citylights.com/info/?fa=event&event_id=279

Call

(415) 362-8193 (Box Office)