Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi | Boy, Snow, Bird with Okey Ndibe | Foreign Gods, Inc. (A)

Cost: FREE
No tickets required. For Info: 215-567-4341.

Before her 19th birthday, Helen Oyeyemi had already written the highly acclaimed novel The Icarus Girl, a story about folklore and childhood portrayed “not through the distancing lens of time, but as scary and magical as it really was” (San Francisco Chronicle). Her follow-up, The Opposite House, uses Cuban mythology as means to explore truth, faith, and the thin wall between myth and reality. 2009’s White is for Witching, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award and a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, spins the “unconventional, intoxicating and deeply disquieting” (Publishers Weekly) gothic tale of an old house and a teenaged girl who share equally bizarre and increasingly ravenous appetites. Boy, Snow, Bird revisits the classic story of Snow White through the prism of a young mother’s experiences with race and family in wintry 1950s Massachusetts.

In his “superb” and “gritty” (The New Internationalist) debut novel Arrows of Rain, Okey Ndibe garnered acclaim for his dissection of the relationship between the individual and the larger politics of the modern African state. A journalist and magazine editor in his native Nigeria, Ndibe has taught at several universities, including Trinity College, Brown University, and the University of Lagos as a Fulbright scholar. A founding editor of the esteemed African Commentary magazine, he has contributed articles, poems, stories, and essays to a number of domestic and international publications. Foreign Gods, Inc. tells the tale of an immigrant cab driver’s struggles with American culture, and the choices he makes that lead toward an “inexorable and ineffably sad” (Kirkus Reviews) reckoning. (MDGentleReader)… (more)

Boy, snow, bird Helen Oyeyemi Before her 19th birthday, Helen Oyeyemi had already written the highly acclaimed novel The Icarus Girl, a story about folklore and childhood portrayed “not through the distancing lens of time, but as scary and magical as it really was” (San Francisco Chronicle). Her follow-up, The Opposite House, uses Cuban mythology as means to explore truth, faith, and the thin wall between myth and reality. 2009’s White is for Witching, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award and a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, spins the “unconventional, intoxicating and deeply disquieting” (Publishers Weekly) gothic tale of an old house and a teenaged girl who share equally bizarre and increasingly ravenous appetites. Boy, snow, bird revisits the classic story of Snow White through the prism of a young mother’s experiences with race and family in wintry 1950s Massachusetts. Foreign Gods, Inc Okey Ndibe In his “superb” and “gritty” (The New Internationalist) debut novel Arrows of Rain, Okey Ndibe garnered acclaim for his dissection of the relationship between the individual and the larger politics of the modern African state. A journalist and magazine editor in his native Nigeria, Ndibe has taught at several universities, including Trinity College, Brown University, and the University of Lagos as a Fulbright scholar. A founding editor of the esteemed African Commentary magazine, he has contributed articles, poems, stories, and essays to a number of domestic and international publications. Foreign Gods, Inc. tells the tale of an immigrant cab driver’s struggles with American culture, and the choices he makes that lead toward an “inexorable and ineffably sad” (Kirkus Reviews) reckoning. Parkway Central Library 1901 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway) This is a FREE event; no tickets or reservations are required. For more information, please call 215-567-4341, or click here

Location: Street: Free Library of Philadelphia Additional: 1901 Vine Street City: Philadelphia, Province: Pennsylvania Postal Code: 19103-5207 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Johanna Skibsrud discusses This Will Be Difficult to Explain: And Other Stories.; Helen Oyeyemi discusses The Icarus Girl.; Miriam Toews discusses Irma Voth.

Join us in welcoming three acclaimed authors whose work explores the tension, promise and difficulty inherent in interpersonal relationships. Even if Sartre was right when he announced that hell is other people, the opposite may prove to be just as true. With This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories , Giller Prize winner Johanna Skibsrud introduces us to an astonishing array of characters, showing us through their eyes what even they cannot see and uncorking minor epiphanies in the middle of the most unremarkable days. Helen Oyeyemi completed her first novel, The Icarus Girl , just before her 19th birthday. Her fourth novel, Mr. Fox , is magical, inventive and profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another. Full of delicious period detail, this is a love story like no other. Miriam Toews’ new novel, Irma Voth , brings us back to the beloved voice of her Governor General’s Literary Award winning #1 bestseller A Complicated Kindness , and to a Mennonite community in the Mexican desert. The stifling, reclusive Mennonite life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth—newly married and newly deserted—is irrevocably changed when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the community. Tickets: $15 ($10 reduced). Free for members. (thebookpile)… (more)