PEN/Bellwether Prize-winning author Jamila Minnicks joins Well-Read Black Girl's Glory Edim for an enlightening discussion about her novel "Moonrise Over New Jessup."
Join the newest and hottest book club in town! Glory Edim is excited to bring her legendary book club to the DC Public Library, introducing a cohort of diverse writers to future generations.
For the July meeting of the Well-Read Black Girl at DC Public Library Book Club, PEN/Bellwether Prize-winning author Jamila Minnicks joins Glory for an enlightening discussion about her novel Moonrise Over New Jessup. The title opens in 1957 and follows Alice Young as she moves to the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup’s political power, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.
Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup, won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Her short fiction and essays are published, or forthcoming, in The Sun, CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere, and her piece, Politics of Distraction, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2022, Jamila was awarded a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and she also earned a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Jamila is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.
It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup’s political power, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.
Well-Read Black Girl is generously supported by the DC Public Library Foundation.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Discover Summer | Book Club | Author Talk |