Celebrate the release of Habila with Wayétu Moore!

EVENT DEETS

When: Monday, January 18 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.

• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy Habila, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup at the event.

Please Note: Copies of Habila purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must purchase a copy from Kindred Stories. 

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If your book is not retrieved it will be returned to the publisher and will not be available for pick up in the future.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From the acclaimed author of She Would Be King, a dazzling and daring work of magical realism that weaves through the lives of a Liberian immigrant family and the water goddess who haunts them

In this ambitious new novel, the bestselling and prize-winning writer Wayétu Moore delivers us into the lives of a young girl, Melanctha, and her family amid the loss of their patriarch, Tokpa. They relocate from Liberia to the backwater town of Hunt, Texas, a land that proves hostile to them—until one day, a school bully pushes Melanctha into a lake, and she finds that she can breathe underwater. Melanctha discovers that her newfound ability comes from Habila, a gorgeous, beguiling half woman, half sea deity who bestows on her a gift: a comb that, if touched, can lure people into the water and make them disappear for good.

But Melanctha’s power has not come without a price. Habila has languished alone for millennia, blaming men for her loneliness. She harbors a hatred so potent that she has committed her existence to ridding the world of them. As Melanctha’s ties to Habila deepen, a family mystery unravels, and Melanctha learns that the siren may have secrets, too.

Inspired by the African legend of Mami Wata, Habila is a kaleidoscopic tale tracing a family and a woman through the years as they navigate supernatural forces and long-buried truths. In lush, lyrical prose, Moore crafts an elegant story that probes the corners of womanhood and motherhood, immigrant identity, and the legacies wrought by men who take but never give back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayétu Moore is the author of the novel She Would Be King and the memoir The Dragons, the Giant, the Women. She received the 2019 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction and the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Moore is a graduate of Howard University, the University of Southern California, and Columbia University.