Nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award For Debut Novel Finalist, and shortlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Maisy Card discusses her electric family saga These Ghosts are Family, a transporting debut novel that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations.

She will be in conversation with Cherie Jones, author of the debut novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, one of the most anticipated books of 2021. Cherie will be speaking from her home in Barbados. Her book is an intimate and visceral portrayal of interconnected lives, across race and class, in a rapidly changing resort town.

Their conversation will be led by Tiphanie Yanique, an award-winning poet and author of Land of Love and Drowning.

This is a free talk, held live online via Crowdcast; register and view here.

All authors appear for free and the best way to thank and support them is by buying their books! Cherie’s and Maisy’s books are available from Festival partner Watchung Booksellers here.

Maisy Card was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, but was raised in Queens, New York. She earned an MFA from Brooklyn College, an MLIS from Rutgers University and a BA in English and American Studies from Wesleyan University. She is currently an instructor for the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop and a fiction editor for The Brooklyn Rail.

Cherie S.A. Jones received a LL.B degree from the University of the West Indies, Barbados, was admitted to the Bar in Barbados in 1997. Cherie won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 1999. She won both the Archie Markham Award and the A.M. Heath Prize at Sheffield Hallam in the UK. She still works as a lawyer, in addition to her writing.

This event is part of Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival’s special series of author events, Global Voices. See all of the talks here.

Any proceeds from the festival benefit parent organization, Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether, which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education and opportunity gaps in Essex County, NJ. You can read more about Succeed2gether and the festival at www.succeed2gether.org.