TICKETS: $5 general admission tickets on sale on this webpage starting on Tuesday, March 26 at 12 pm noon.
Elizabeth Acevedo will read from her new novel Family Lore, followed by an on-stage conversation with celebrated Houston author Jasminne Mendez. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series.
ELIZABETH ACEVEDO, the current Young People’s Poet Laureate, “is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious, and lyrical imagination” (Julia Alvarez). Her New York Times bestselling YA novel-in-verse The Poet X was “an incredibly potent debut” (Jason Reynolds) and won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Carnegie Medal. Acevedo is also the author of the picture book Inheritance: A Visual Poem and the YA books Clap When You Land and With Fire on High, which explore family, love, and Dominican-American culture.
Acevedo comes to Houston to share her first novel for adults about a lineage of powerful sisters, Family Lore. About the novel, Angie Cruz writes, “Acevedo has written unforgettable characters who breathe new like to how we grieve, age, take care of each other.” According to Kiese Laymon, “No writer on earth transforms a page into a home with distinct emotional chambers like Acevedo…. This is how stories should be made” and Jacqueline Woodson adds, “With Family Lore, Elizabeth Acevedo has made the transition into the adult world look easy. The true gift of a stunningly talented writer.” Acevedo lives in Washington D.C. and is a National Poetry Slam Champion.
JASMINNE MENDEZ is a Dominican-American poet, educator, translator, playwright, and author of several books for adults and children, including the YA memoirs Island of Dreams (which won an International Latino Book Award) and Island Apart (forthcoming), and Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry. Her debut poetry collection City Without Altar came out in 2022, and her debut middle grade novel-in-verse Aniana del Mar Jumps In in Spring 2023. She is Program Director for the literary arts nonprofit Tintero Projects and co-hosts the Inprint/Tintero Projects podcast Ink Well, which showcases primarily Latinx writers.
