Book Talk: 'The Flower Bearers' by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Join us for a conversation between poet, artist, and author of The Flower Bearers: A Memoir Rachel Eliza Griffiths with Ekow Eshun.

On September 24, 2021, Rachel Eliza Griffiths married her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day, hundreds of miles away, her closest friend, Kamilah Aisha Moon, who was expected to speak at the wedding, died suddenly. Eleven months later, as Rachel Eliza was learning to exist without her, a brutal attack nearly killed her husband. As trauma compounded trauma, Rachel Eliza realized that to survive her heartbreak, she would need to mourn not only her friend, but the woman she had been on her wedding day.

Rachel Eliza interweaves this love story with another, that of her relationship with Rushdie, of the challenges they have faced and the depth of their connection. Celebrating the ways that these two extraordinary people have transformed her life, she reflects on the beauty and pain that come with opening oneself fully to love.

'The Flower Bearers goes to some dark places, but there is joy, too . . . simultaneously a love story, a portrait of sisterhood and a visceral depiction of violence, loss and emotional devastation' Guardian

‘Profoundly moving’ Sunday Times

‘What a gift The Flower Bearers is. Tenderly, carefully, Rachel Eliza Griffiths excavates deep into matters of her heart, and her sentences make space for readers to do the same … This is a precise and intentional masterwork, that reminded me of the power of love that endures.’ Caleb Azumah Nelson

‘In writing such a raw and open tribute to courage … she has reached an accommodation with that grief, and found a way to transmute it into poetry’ Observer

schedule:

830 doors

9 conversation

10 -11 book signing x social

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an artist, poet, and novelist. Her hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Seeing the Body, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Award in Poetry, the winner of the 2020 Paterson Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 NAACP Image Award. Griffiths' work has appeared widely, including The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Best American Poetry (2020, 2021), Tin House, and many others. Her novel Promise (2023) is also published by John Murray. She lives in New York City. IG: @ RachelElizaGriffiths

Ekow Eshun is a curator, writer and broadcaster. His most recent book is The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them (Hamish Hamilton, 2024). IG: @ ekoweshun

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