The Flower Bearers: Rachel Eliza Griffiths & Susana M. Morris

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 and the Auburn Avenue Research Library welcome Rachel Eliza Griffiths in conversation with Susana M. Morris for a celebration of .

On September 24, 2021, Rachel Eliza Griffiths married her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day, hundreds of miles away, Griffiths’ closest friend and chosen sister, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who was expected to speak at the wedding, died suddenly. Eleven months later, as Griffiths attempted to piece together her life as a newlywed with heartbreak in one hand and immense love in the other, a brutal attack nearly killed her husband. As trauma compounded trauma, Griffiths realized that in order to survive her grief, she would need to mourn not only her friend, but the woman she had been on her wedding day, a woman who had also died that day.
In the process of rebuilding a self, Griffiths chronicles her friendship with Moon, the seventeen years since their meeting at Sarah Lawrence College. Together, they embraced their literary foremothers—Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, to name a few—and fought to embrace themselves as poets, artists, and Black women. Alongside this unbreakable bond, Griffiths weaves the story of her relationship with Rushdie, of the challenges they have faced and the unshakeable devotion that endures.
In The Flower Bearers, Griffiths inscribes the trajectories of two transformational relationships with grace and honesty, chronicling the beauty and pain that comes with opening oneself fully to love.

About the author

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. She is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award. Griffiths is also a recipient of fellowships from many organizations, including Cave Canem Foundation, Kimbilio, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, and other publications. Her debut novel, Promise, was a Kirkus Reviews and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year.

About the conversation partner

Susana M. Morris is a queer daughter of Caribbean immigrants and a scholar of Black feminism and a cultural critic who has dedicated her career to studying the interior lives of Black women. She is an associate professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. A former Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University and Norman Freeling Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, she is the author of and co-founder of The Crunk Feminist Collective. Her other works include the co-edited collection and the co-authored young adult handbook . Her writing has appeared in Gawker, Long Reads, Cosmopolitan.com, and Ebony.com, and she has been featured on NPR, the BBC, and in Essence magazine. Her most recent book is . Susana was honored to serve as the board chair of Charis Circle, the non-profit programming arm of Charis Books & More, for eight years.

Our Partners

The Literature, Media, and Writing Department at Spelman College offers comprehensive training in English-language literary, visual, and rhetorical traditions with a special emphasis on Black women’s contributions to global histories of cultural expression.

The Spelman Archives serves as a site of memory for the college and broader community and seeks to preserve the stories of Black women and Black people across the African Diaspora.

About the venue:
Masks are encouraged but not required.
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.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. Donate via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.

Please contact us at [email protected] or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event.

By attending our event, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email [email protected].

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