Library Welcomes Author Afia Atakora in Live Book Discussion

Press release from Norwalk Public Library:

July 29, 2020

Please join us on Thursday, August 20, at 3 p.m., when the Norwalk Public Library’s Not Your Usual Book Club welcomes author Afia Atakora to its Zoom room for an insightful discussion of her debut novel Conjure Women, published in April 2020. The book is available now to Norwalk library cardholders in print, and on Overdrive as an ebook and audiobook. Please contact book group moderator Susannah Violino at sviolino@norwalkpl.org to register, and for information about joining this live program.

Published to much buzz and critical acclaim, Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom. - Publisher

Afia Atakora was born in the United Kingdom and raised in New Jersey, where she now lives. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was the recipient of the De Alba Fellowship. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers.

This press release was produced by Norwalk Public Library. The views expressed here are the author's own.