ZOOM LINK:
https://zoom.us/j/94541508416
A conversation celebrating Cox’s debut novel “Silver Beach” with Greenidge, award-winning author of “We Love You, Charlie Freeman” and the upcoming “Libertie”
In Claire Cox’s Juniper Prize-winning book, it’s been decades since Mara's family was last together, decades since the day her sister Allison drowned at Silver Beach. After the family tragedy, Mara's father took her across the country and raised her in relative privilege, and since then, she has made a tidy, quiet life for herself in western Massachusetts. Her half-sister, Shannon, stayed with their mother in San Diego—barely getting by on her mother's disability checks the retail job she just quit, Shannon can't remember a time when Linda wasn't drunk.
When a heart attack lands Linda in the hospital, Shannon's first impulse is to skip town—to finally escape her mother's orbit and make her sister step up. While Mara gave up on Linda years ago and couldn't have less in common with her sister, a stoner misfit, it's time for her to stop running from everything that makes her have feelings. This is a novel about the persistent, mystifying ties of family, the extravagant mess of addiction, and what it means to actually live inside your own life.
CLAIRE COX is a writer and high school teacher originally from San Diego. She earned her MFA at Hunter College in New York City. Her story "Look at You" was published in the Fall 2020 issue of The Missouri Review. Her first novel, Silver Beach, won the 2020 Juniper Prize for Fiction and will be published by UMass Press March 26. She lives in Manhattan with her family and is working on a novel and an essay collection.
Whiting Award-winner Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of "We Love You, Charlie Freeman" and the upcoming "Libertie." Her debut novel starts as a story about mothers and daughters, sisterhood, adolescent love, and grown-up misconduct, but becomes an exploration of America’s failure to find a way to talk about race. "Libertie" is inspired by one of the first black U.S female doctors. Rich with historical detail, this book will resonate with those eager to understand our present by diving into our complicated past.
KAITLYN GREENIDGE is a contributing writer for The New York Times and has written for Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, and more. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
