Powell's Presents: Yrsa Daley-Ward in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling

The inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl Books series, Yrsa Daley-Ward’s The Catch (Liveright) is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity. Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. As infants they were adopted into different families, Clara sent to live with a successful, upper-class couple, and Dempsey with a sullen, unaffectionate city councilor. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life — the very life, it seems, she might have had if the girls had never been born. As with most things, Clara and Dempsey cannot see eye to eye on the confounding appearance of this woman. Clara, a celebrity author with a penchant for excessive drinking and one-night stands, is all too willing to welcome the confident and temperamental Serene into her home. But cloistered Dempsey, who makes a modest living doing menial data entry work from the confines of her apartment, is dubious of the whole situation, believing this all to be the insidious ruse of a con woman. Clashing over this stranger who burrows deeper and deeper into their lives, the sisters hurtle toward an altercation that threatens their very existence, forcing them to finally confront their pasts — together. In her riveting first foray into fiction, Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, “How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?” Daley-Ward will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility.

Buy the book: https://www.powells.com/events/yrsa-daley-ward-in-conversation-with-lydia-kiesling-6-16-25

You may also like the following events from Powell's Books, Inc.:

• This Saturday, 14th June, 10:30 am, Powell's Presents: Kids' Storytime With Suzanne Kaufman & Zoey Abbott in Portland
• Next Tuesday, 17th June, 07:00 pm, Powell's Presents: Coll Thrush in Conversation With Catherine McNeur in Beaverton
• Next Tuesday, 17th June, 07:00 pm, Powell's Presents: Robert P. Baird in Conversation With Keith Scribner in Portland

Also check out other Arts events in Portland, Literary Art events in Portland, Workshops in Portland.