• IRL AUTHOR TALK: Firsborn Girls with Bernice McFadden - April 10 @ 7 PM

IRL AUTHOR TALK: Firsborn Girls with Bernice McFadden - April 10 @ 7 PM

Regular price
Ticket Type:

Added to your cart!

Celebrate award winning author, Bernice McFadden's memoir, Firstborn Girls!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, April 10 @ 7 PM 

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004) 

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to ensure your seat an a copy of Firstborn Girls!

There are limited free RSVP ONLY tickets so please make sure that you can make it. 

Please note that copies of Firstborn Girls purchased from other retailers will not be allowed in the venue. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.

Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”

Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.

A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bernice L. McFadden is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University and the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar, The Warmest December, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, GloriousGathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction), and Praise Song for the Butterflies (long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton is an award-winning writer, director, performer, critic, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, TX. Praised by the NY Times as an artist who “defies categorization”, her genre-bending works span from stage to page, and everything in between. She is the author of Newsworthy (Bloomsday Literary, 2019) which was translated into German (Berichtenswert, Elif Verlag, 2020), Black Chameleon (Henry Holt, 2023), and an upcoming children's book, Hush Hush Hurricane (Kokila Books, 2025). Honored as part of Houston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 class, she has been a contributing writer for Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN's Andscape, to name a few.

She has penned stage works including Marian's Song (Houston Grand Opera), The Forest of Secrets (National Sawdust), Atlanta: 1906 (Atlanta Opera) & On My Mind (Opera Theater St. Louis). Serving as Playwright/Director, she produced The World's Intermission, commissioned by Performing Arts Houston (Jones Hall), which has since been adapted for film, and Plumshuga: The Rise of Lauren Anderson, a choreopoem (Stages Theater) which made the cover of the NYT Culture section.
 
Her recent memoir, Black Chameleon examines Black womanhood through afrofuturistic mythology which Mouton later adapted into a storybook opera titled (Lula, the Mighty Griot, HGO) and an independent short film (Headache & Heartthrob). A former Resident Artist with the American Lyric Theater, Rice University, and the Houston Museum of African American Culture, her upcoming projects will debut at The Kennedy Center and American Lyric Theater. She resides in Houston, TX.

Check out our shop on bookshop.org to order and still support us ♥

discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •
discover more in this category •

Stay Informed. We're building a community committed to celebrating Black authors + artisans. Subscribe to keep up with all things Kindred Stories.