Boston Book Festival 2019

We are pleased to feature the authors of two of the year’s most electrifying memoirs in this session. Many BBF fans will remember Saeed Jones as the engaging host of the 2016 fiction keynote with Colson Whitehead. He’s back at the BBF with How We Fight for Our Lives, a coming-of-age memoir that “marks the emergence of a major literary voice,” according to Kirkus Reviews. His poetically told story of growing up black and gay in the South reflects on overarching concerns about race, queerness, power, love and grief. Cyrus Grace Dunham’s A Year Without a Name is a searing and honest account of growing up alienated from one’s own body. Coming to terms with no longer wanting be called Grace and then with the decision to become Cyrus was only the first step in their trans experience, one that, as Kirkus Reviews puts it, “defies categorization as much as it defies resolution.” This is sure to be a riveting and powerful convo moderated by Arielle Gray, WBUR’s arts engagement producer for the ARTery. Sponsored by Creative Nonfiction.