Firstborn Girls: An Evening with Bernice L. McFadden and Karen Good Marable

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is encouraged. This event takes place at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30303. Doors open at 6pm. Event begins promptly at 6:30pm.

Charis welcomes Bernice L. McFadden in conversation with Karen Good Marable for a celebration of Firstborn Girls: A Memoir.

About the book:

From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.
On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.
Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.
A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.

About the author:

Bernice L. McFadden is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University and the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar, The Warmest December, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, Glorious, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction), and Praise Song for the Butterflies (long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction). She is a five-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

About the conversation partner:

Raised in the HBCU town of Prairie View, Texas, Karen Good Marable is a respected writer known for her distinctive voice and Southern sensibilities. With a career spanning three decades, Karen’s byline has appeared in numerous magazines and journals including the New Yorker, Essence, Oxford American, and New York. Her essays and poetry have been published in several books and best-of collections including And It Don't Stop: The Best Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years and Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic. Karen’s first book, Yaya and the Sea [Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster] was chosen as a 2024 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Book.

About the venue:

AARL has a free parking lot accessible via Courtland street. Please park and enter the library to get a guest pass for your dashboard before having a seat in the auditorium. Masks are recommended but not required.

Host or Publisher Charis Books and More + Charis Circle