Join us at Old Firehouse Books as we give a warm welcome to Lauren Rhoades for her debut release, Split the Baby! Lauren will be in store on July 22nd from 6:00-7:00pm, joined by Alison Turner to discuss her book. We will have time at the end of the event for personalization of any copies bought. Books are available for purchase in store or online, but we do not ship internationally.
About the book:
In honest and captivating prose, Split the Baby chronicles the toll of divorce and family rupture from the perspective of a child who was nearly torn in two. Lauren Rhoades retells her experience of growing up caught between two homes run by equally strong women: a fervently Catholic stepmother and a deeply sensitive Jewish mother. Pulled toward radically distinct family cultures with rich but conflicting religious traditions, the young girl struggles to reconcile her stepmother's possessive charm with her mother's fierce and vulnerable love. Working with a trove of salvaged documents—including psychological evaluations, legal records, and personal family diaries—Rhoades searches for answers to questions of identity, spirituality, and the relationships that most deeply shape us. Ultimately, this debut memoir-in-pieces is a thoughtful story of learning to become whole again.
About Lauren Rhoades:
Lauren Rhoades is a writer, editor, and grantmaker living in Jackson, Mississippi. Originally from Denver, Colorado, Lauren has served with AmeriCorps, started Mississippi's first fermentation company, and helmed the Eudora Welty House & Garden. She is now director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission and a host of MPB’s The Mississippi Arts Hour. In 2022, Lauren founded Rooted Magazine, an online publication dedicated to telling unfiltered stories about what it means to call Mississippi home. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Mississippi University for Women. Split the Baby is her first book.
About Alison Turner:
Alison Turner grew up in the mountains of Colorado, where she learned to endure large amounts of time in inclement weather waiting for buses. She is a community-engaged writer, researcher, and oral historian, and has a PhD in Literary Studies from the University of Denver. Her first collection of short stories, Defensible Spaces (Torrey House Press) was a 2024 Colorado Book Award finalist.
You may also like the following events from Old Firehouse Books:
Also check out other
Arts events in Fort Collins,
Literary Art events in Fort Collins.
