Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT - 8:30 pm EDT September 25, 2024
The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed
This event has been postponed.
In the second event in this fall’s four-part series on housing, land, and the policies that shape our country, we investigate the narratives that have come to shape our understanding of contemporary rural America.
In a time of ever-increasing polarization, the colors red and blue on a U.S. map often depict the contrast between urban and rural populations. Books like Hillbilly Elegy are presented as archetypes of rural regions and cultures in the United States when, more often, they tell a single story that perpetuates damaging stereotypes.
In this event, we bring together four novelists whose latest books are set in places where natural beauty is abundant but resources such as jobs, healthcare, affordable housing, and upward mobility are scarce. Essie Chambers (Swift River), Julia Phillips (Bear), and Joe Wilkins (The Entire Sky) will join us for a panel moderated by Nina St. Pierre, author of the memoir Love Is a Burning Thing, to examine how fiction can reintroduce complexity to our national portrait of rural America and celebrate the multiplicity of voices that truly exists.
In Conversation
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Essie Chambers
Essie Chambers
Essie Chambers earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Vermont Studio Center, and Baldwin for the Arts. A former film and television executive, she was a producer on the documentary Descendant, which was released by the Obamas’ Higher Ground production company and Netflix in 2022. Swift River is her debut novel.
Photo Credit: Yekaterina Gyadu
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Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.
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Joe Wilkins
Joe Wilkins
Joe Wilkins is the author of the novel Fall Back Down When I Die, which was short-listed for the First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, and the award-winning memoir The Mountain and the Fathers. He has published four books of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award, and his stories, essays, and poems have appeared in the Georgia Review, the Harvard Review, Orion, and elsewhere. He is a Pushcart Prize winner, a three-time High Plains Book Award winner, and a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the National Magazine Award, and the PEN/USA Award. He lives with his wife and two children in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield University.
Photo Credit: Alexis Bonogofsky
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Nina St. Pierre
Nina St. Pierre
Nina St. Pierre is the author of the memoir, Love Is a Burning Thing, which explores her mother’s self-immolation and boundaries between mysticism and madness. It was featured in People Magazine, the LA Times, and named one of Esquire‘s Best Memoirs of 2024. Her essays and features on spirituality, the body, queerness, and the American West, have been published in GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Gossamer, Outside, Bitch, The Cut, Elle, NYLON, and more. She was a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Nonfiction Literature, a 2023 Religion and Environment Story Project Fellow, and holds an MFA from Rutgers-Camden.
Featured Books
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Swift River
By Essie Chambers
It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key elements of Pop’s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future?
A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us and heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.
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The Entire Sky
By Joe Wilkins
With his long hair and penchant for guitar, teenage Justin is the spitting image of his idol, Kurt Cobain—a resemblance that has often marked him an outcast. When the long-simmering abuse from his uncle finally boils over, Justin has no choice but to break free, in a violent act that will haunt him, and try to make it on his own as a runaway.
Meanwhile, in rural Montana, Rene Bouchard, a rancher nearing retirement, grieves the recent death of his wife. Her passing has revealed precisely how fractured the family has become—particularly the relationship between Rene and his daughter, Lianne. As old wounds ache anew, father and daughter begin to doubt the possibility of reconciliation, even as they each privately yearn for it.
Justin’s wanderings bring him to the Bouchard family ranch, and soon Rene and Lianne take the boy in as their own. But before long, Justin’s past threatens to catch up with him, jeopardizing not only his new bond with Rene and Lianne but also the home he’s finally been able to claim. With its lyricism, tangible evocation of place, and piercing insight reminiscent of the novels of Barbara Kingsolver and Kent Haruf, The Entire Sky is an unforgettable piece of modern, American fiction.
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Bear
By Julia Phillips
Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.
Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the desire to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.
A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us—Bear is a propulsive, mythical, richly imagined novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.
About this series
On America
Our On America series brings writers, journalists, activists, and change-makers together to reflect on the critical issues of our times. Who are we and who are we becoming? How do the stories we tell shape who we are as a nation? Will we rise to the challenges we face?
