Tara Stringfellow on Memphis with Christine Pride

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT April 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.

Inspired by the author’s own family history, Tara Stringfellow’s debut novel, Memphis, is a triumphant ode to the power of art in the face of brutality. Tracing three generations of a family constantly redirected by violence, Memphis paints a stark reality of what it means to be Black in the American south. When Joan, the daughter of the family and an aspiring artist, begins to channel her hurt into sketching the women of North Memphis, she begins to paint her own path to healing.

Join Stringfellow and writer-editor Christine Pride for an exploration of this brilliant interrogation of dichotomies—police brutality and justice, powerlessness and freedom, fate and forgiveness, doubt and faith, sacrifice and love.

*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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Featuring

  • Tara Stringfellow_social2_credit Matthew F. Thomas (1)

    Tara M. Stringfellow

    Tara M. Stringfellow

    Poet, former attorney, Northwestern University MFA graduate, and semifinalist for the Fulbright Fellowship, Tara M. Stringfellow has written for Collective Unrest, Minerva Rising, Jet Fuel Review, Women Arts Quarterly Journal, and Apogee Journal, among other publications. After having lived in Okinawa, Ghana, Chicago, Cuba, Spain, Italy, and Washington, D.C., she moved back home to Memphis, where she sits on her porch swing every evening with her hound, Huckleberry, listening to records and chatting with neighbors.

    Photo Credit: Matthew F. Thomas

  • Christine Pride - William L (1)

    Christine Pride

    Christine Pride

    Christine Pride is a writer, editor, and longtime publishing veteran. She’s held editorial posts at many different trade imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Crown, Hyperion, and Simon & Schuster. As an editor, Christine has published a range of books, with a special emphasis on inspirational stories and memoirs, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. As a freelance editorial consultant, she does select editing and proposal/content development, as well as teaching and coaching, and pens a regular column—“Race Matters”—for Cup of Jo. She lives in New York City.

    Photo Credit: Christine Han

Featured Book

  1. . 
    9780593230480-1-Claire-Fennell-1060x1600

    Memphis

    By Tara Stringfellow

    Published by Penguin Random House

    PURCHASE

    ​​A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.

    In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s violence, seeking refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis. This wasn’t the first time violence altered the course of Joan’s family’s trajectory, and she knows it won’t be the last. Longing to become an artist, Joan pours her rage and grief into sketching portraits of the women of North Memphis–including their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who seems to know something about curses.

    Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of voices, Memphis weaves back and forth in time to show how the past and future are forever intertwined. It is only when Joan comes to see herself as a continuation of a long matrilineal tradition—and the women in her family as her guides to healing—that she understands that her life does not have to be defined by vengeance. That the sole weapon she needs is her paintbrush.

    Inspired by the author’s own family history, Memphis—the Black fairy tale she always wanted to read—explores the complexity of what we pass down, not only in our families, but in our country: police brutality and justice, powerlessness and freedom, fate and forgiveness, doubt and faith, sacrifice and love.

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