Join us as we welcome TAYARI JONES in conversation with AVERY CUNNINGHAM on WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 at 6:00 PM to celebrate the release of Jones' new novel KIN.
THIS IS A TICKETED EVENT.
THIS TICKET ADMITS ONE PERSON TO NOVEL'S EVENT WITH TAYARI JONES ON 3/18/2026 AND COMES WITH ONE COPY OF KIN.
YOU MUST SHOW YOUR TICKET AT THE DOOR.
ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THE BOOK AND HER PREVIOUS TITLES WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE IN STORE AT THE EVENT.
PURCHASE YOUR TICKET ON THE NOVEL WEBSITE.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage--Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
"Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I'm always hoping to find: smart and funny and deftly profound. This is Tayari Jones's very best work." --Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother's death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels , most recently An American Marriage, which was an Oprah's Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama's summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and lives in Atlanta. Her latest novel is KIN.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER:
Avery Cunningham is a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, and a 2016 graduate of DePaul University's Master of Arts in Writing & Publishing program. She has over a decade of editorial experience with various literary magazines, small presses, and bestselling authors. Avery grew up surrounded by exceptional African Americans who strove to uplift their communities while also maintaining a tenuous hold on prosperity in a starkly segregated environment. The sensation of being at once within and without is something she has grappled with since childhood and explores thoroughly in her work of historical fiction. When not writing, Avery is adventuring with her Bernese Mountain Dog, Grizzly, and wading waist-deep in research for her next novel. She aspires to tell the stories of complex characters at the fringes of history fighting for their right to exist. The Mayor of Maxwell Street is her debut novel.
You may also like the following events from Novel Memphis:
Also check out other
Arts events in Memphis,
Literary Art events in Memphis,
Trips & Adventurous Activities in Memphis.
