In-Store: Lauren Morrow: Little Movements w/ Rob Franklin

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/0IZ6UhoBZKE
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

A sparkling debut novel about a woman who must figure out whether being creatively fulfilled is compatible with being happily married, and what it means to be a Black artist in one of the whitest parts of America.

Thirty-something Layla Smart was raised by her mother to dream medium. But all Layla’s ever wanted was a career in dance, which requires dreaming big. So when she receives an offer to be the choreographer-in-residence at Briar House in rural Vermont, she temporarily leaves behind Brooklyn, her job, her friends, and her husband to pursue it.

Layla has nine months to navigate a complex institution and teach a career-defining dance to a group of Black dancers in a very small, very white town. She has help from a handsome composer, a neurotic costume designer, a witty communications director, and the austere program director who can only compare Layla to Black choreographers. It's an enormous feat, and that’s before Layla’s marriage buckles under the strain of distance, before Briar House’s problematic past comes to light, and before Layla finds out she's pregnant.

Little Movements is a poignant and insightful story that explores issues of race, class, art, and ambition. It is a novel about self-discovery, the pressures placed on certain bodies, and never giving up on your dream.

Lauren Morrow studied dance and creative writing at Connecticut College and earned an MFA in fiction from the Helen Zell Writers' Program. She was a Kimbilio Fellow and an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow and is the recipient of two Hopwood Awards, among other prizes. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares and the South Carolina Review. She worked in publicity at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and is now a senior publicist at Dutton, Plume, and Tiny Reparations Books. Originally from St. Louis, she lives in Brooklyn.

Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Great Black Hope is his first novel.

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