Mecca Jamilah Sullivan on Big Girl with Kaitlyn Greenidge

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT July 27, 2022

The Center for Fiction*
& Online via Zoom

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In-person* tickets include a $10 bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.

The Center for Fiction is thrilled to welcome back our Emerging Writer Fellowship alum Mecca Jamilah Sullivan (Blue Talk and Love) in celebration of her debut novel, Big Girl. A Vulture, Ms, The Root, GoodReads, and SheReads.com 2022 most-anticipated pick, Big Girl is an inimitable debut novel. The book tells the story of Malaya, a teen struggling with the competing pressures of body image, family, and identity as she comes of age in a rapidly changing Harlem. Sullivan’s voice is lyrical and urgent, blending poetics with powerful narrative storytelling.

Award-winning novelist Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie, We Love You, Charlie Freeman) joins Sullivan for a discussion of this honest and compelling novel.

*Proof of vaccination is required to attend this event in person. Mask wearing is also required throughout the building. Accepted vaccination proofs include:

  • CDC vaccination card (or an image of it)
  • Excelsior Pass or Excelsior Pass Plus (or a printout of it)
  • A record of vaccination from the healthcare provider who administered your vaccine

Anyone 5 and older is required to show proof of two vaccine doses or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Anyone 18 and older must also present a government issued photo ID.

If you remain unvaccinated because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, please contact us at [email protected] for assistance or to request a reasonable accommodation.

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In Conversation

  • 24334_sullivanmeccajamilah_ckathrynraines_web - Eliana Cohen-Orth

    Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

    Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

    Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is an associate professor of English at Georgetown University, and the author of Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith A. Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary. A native of Harlem, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

    Photo Credit: Kathryn Raines

  • 248812a5f076b6894caf18ad41f835fd.12.7.21-Kaitlyn-Greenidge - Eliana Cohen-Orth

    Kaitlyn Greenidge

    Kaitlyn Greenidge

    Kaitlyn Greenidge’s debut novel is We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books), one of the New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016. Her writing has appeared in the Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, Buzzfeed, Transition magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Believer, American Short Fiction, and other places. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently Features Director at Harper’s Bazaar as well as a contributing writer for the New York Times. Her second novel, Libertie, is published by Algonquin Books and out now.

    Photo Credit: Syreeta Mcfadden

Featured Book

  1. . 
    9781324091417-Eliana-Cohen-Orth-1060x1600

    Big Girl

    By Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

    Published by W. W. Norton / Liveright

    PURCHASE

    Exquisitely compassionate and witty, Big Girl traces the intergenerational hungers and desires of Black womanhood, as told through the unforgettable voice of Malaya Clondon.

    In her highly anticipated debut novel, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan explores the perils—and undeniable beauty—of insatiable longing.

    Growing up in a rapidly changing Harlem, eight-year-old Malaya hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings; she’d rather paint alone in her bedroom or enjoy forbidden street foods with her father. For Malaya, the pressures of her predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are relentless, as are the expectations passed down from her painfully proper mother and sharp-tongued grandmother. As she comes of age in the 1990s, she finds solace in the music of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, but her weight continues to climb—until a family tragedy forces her to face the source of her hunger, ultimately shattering her inherited stigmas surrounding women’s bodies, and embracing her own desire. Written with vibrant lyricism shot through with tenderness, Big Girl announces Sullivan as an urgent and vital voice in contemporary fiction.

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