BOOK LAUNCH: THE SLEEPING SISTERS by Jennifer Givhan
About this Event
“House of Spirits meets The Wire in this marvelously strange story of M**der and motherhood; a gloriously surreal novel in which magical realism meets police procedural. Jenn Givhan twists your brain and leaves you looking at the world differently for a long time afterward. I have no idea how to describe what I just read, but it was really, really cool.” —T. Kingfisher, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of What Moves the Dead
We're thrilled to welcome Jennifer Givhan to The Twisted Spine in conversation with Rachel Harrison (KISS SLAY REPLAY) on August 26!
About THE SLEEPING SISTERS
Fortuna Miércoles has finally moved her family to a better neighborhood across the Rio Grande, desperate to outrun the curse that’s stalked her bloodline since her greatest grandmother crossed the desert with a cactus thorn splitting her throat. But burying a family’s violent legacy isn’t so easy. Twenty years ago, girls and women vanished into the Albuquerque night, their bones later unearthed on the mesa. The so-called Reaper was never caught. Now, beneath the dormant volcanoes called the Sleeping Sisters, the killings have begun again.
Detective Jeanette Palacio has spent decades chasing the ghosts of her murdered cousins—alongside the memory of the other women she couldn’t avenge. When a new body turns up in Fortuna’s backyard, both women are pulled into a dangerous, ancient plot. Are the Sleeping Sisters awakening—or has someone in Fortuna’s family set a trap?
Inspired by true events and shot through with a Chicana-Indigenous reimagining of the legend of the headless woman, The Sleeping Sisters is a fevered, feral hymn to motherhood and the monstrous bargains we make to protect those we love.
About the speakers:
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. The Los Angeles Times called her novel Salt Bones (Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2025) “a triumph… one of the most masterful marriages of horror, mystery, thriller and literary writing” and it’s a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Book Riot Best Mystery & Thriller of the Year, a Marie Claire Best Mystery-Thriller of the Year, a Library Journal Stellar Selection, and an American Library Association Best Book of the Year.
She holds a Master’s degree from California State University Fullerton and a Master’s in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Rosa’s Einstein (University of Arizona Press) and Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press), and the novels Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing), which were finalists for the Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards and won The Southwest Book Award. Her novel River Woman, River Demon was chosen for Amazon’s Book Club and as a National Together We Read Library Pick and was featured on CBS Mornings. It was a finalist for the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Western Novel and won an International Latino Book Award in the Rudolfo Anaya Latino-Focused Fiction category.
Rachel Harrison is the New York Times Bestselling author of Play Nice, So Thirsty, Black Sheep, Such Sharp Teeth, Cackle, and The Return, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, as an Audible Original, and in her debut story collection Bad Dolls.
Event guidelines:
Each ticket includes either a hardcover copy of THE SLEEPING SISTERS or a $15 Twisted Spine gift card.
Limited additional copies of the books will be available for purchase at the event.
A signing will follow the discussion.
If you have any questions about the guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 17.85 to USD 36.90
