Get Lit! is thrilled to welcome you back to The Bing Crosby Theater for one of 2022’s headlining events—a reading to celebrate the highly-acclaimed fiction writers Lesley Nneka Arimah and Brandon Hobson. Arimah’s stories have been honored with a National Magazine Award, a Commonwealth Short Story Prize and an O. Henry Award. Her debut collection What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky won multiple awards and earned her a spot on the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35. The collection focuses on the lives and experiences of Nigerian women and how to deal with the heavy burden of grief. Her writing expertly weaves in speculative elements to everyday scenarios. Arimah allows the reader a different lens on important topics like gender norms, colonialism, and immigration. Hobson is the author of The Removed, as well as the novel Where the Dead Sit Talking, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award, winner of the Reading the West Award, and longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. His novels highlight the remnants of ancestral trauma through societal justice systems and norms, connection between the natural and spiritual, and familial loss and grief. The authors will be reading their work and engaging in conversation with Spokane writer Alexis M. Smith.
“A haunted work, full of voices old and new. It is about a family’s reckoning with loss and injustice, and it is about a people trying for the same. The journey of this family’s way home is full—in equal measure—of melancholy and love.” —Tommy Orange, author of There There
A RECOMMENDED BOOK FROM
2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FICTION FINALIST
Set in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s, Where the Dead Sit Talking is a stunning and lyrical Native American coming-of-age story.
A PBS NewsHour/New York Times Book Club Pick
A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE
WINNER OF THE 2017 KIRKUS PRIZE
WINNER OF THE NYPL'S YOUNG LIONS FICTION AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE LEONARD PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
“Eerie and intriguing . . . captivates in the first few pages and delivers a gripping, compelling story throughout.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Alexis Smith’s brilliant debut novel is filled with kaleidoscopic pleasures. Line by line, in and out of time, this is a haunted, joyful, beautiful book—a true gift.” —Karen Russell