Award-winning Atlanta author Tayari Jones has joined the small club of writers who've had more than one book chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Oprah Winfrey selected Jones' newly published "Kin" in February, seven years after picking her fourth novel "An American Marriage." The book debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list.
Jones will discuss "Kin" with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown on Monday, April 6, at 5:30 p.m. at Glenn Memorial Chapel at Emory University. The event is free and open to the public.
"Kin" follows Annie and Vernice (Niecy), two motherless girls raised together in 1950s Louisiana. After losing their mothers under different circumstances, the girls form a deep bond. As they grow up, Niecy leaves for Spelman College and marries into an affluent Black family, while Annie sets out across the Jim Crow South searching for the mother who abandoned her.
Jones said the novel began as a word doodle during the pandemic. "There were so many problems in the world, and everything seemed so urgent," she recalled. "I had a hard time plugging into fiction and creativity, so I was not doing the work. I had writer's block."
What started as scribbles on a notepad became a novel that connects Atlanta's literary and academic communities. The Emory event pairs two of the city's most celebrated literary voices in a setting that underscores Atlanta's role as a center for Black literary culture.
