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Author Talk: The Reformatory with Tananarive Due

  • BLK + BRWN. 104 1/2 West 39th Street Kansas City, MO, 64111 United States (map)

Join us on a spine-chilling journey with Tananarive Due, the award-winning author of speculative fiction and horror, as she unveils her latest masterpiece, The Reformatory.

The Details:

  • This will be a Free Ticketed event. So please RSVP - space is limited.

  • Using the RSVP options in the dropbox below you will be able to ‘RSVP only’ or ‘RSVP + book’ (if you’d like to pre-order a copy of The Reformatory), and ‘Book Only’ (in case you aren’t able to make it to the event but still want to support).

About the Book:

A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he's sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida

June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie's journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it's too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award-winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

About the Author:

Tananarive Due is an American Book Award-winning, Essence bestselling author of sixteen books, including Blood Colony, The Living Blood, The Good House, Joplin's Ghost, and Devil's Wake. She was also a contributor to Jonathan Maberry's middle grade anthology, Don't Turn Out the Lights. She has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award. She teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Visit her website TananariveDue.com.

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Author Talk: Diary Of a Man With J.R. Hall