Victor LaValle and Mat Johnson virtual event

Freebird/NYC Books Through Bars presents:
Victor LaValle joins fellow novelist Mat Johnson for a conversation about H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, tackling beloved genres, and reinventing them for our times
Wednesday, September 30, 6:30 pm EST

To register on Crowdcast (where you can also post questions in advance), go to:
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/LaValleJohnsonevent

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As part of our ongoing efforts to raise awareness for NYC Books Through Bars, Freebird is hosting a virtual discussion on September 30 with Victor LaValle and Mat Johnson. LaValle's novel, The Ballad of Black Tom, is featured in our book drive this month (you can purchase it, and two other titles that will be donated to incarcerated readers nationwide). In The Ballad of Black Tom, LaValle takes inspiration from the otherworldliness of "The Horror at Red Hook" while subverting Lovecraft's overt racism.  In Pym, Johnson muses on Poe's unconventional 1838 seafaring novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and veers into literary territories Poe himself would have been in awe of.   Johnson and LaValle will discuss not just their own efforts at breathing new life into classics, but also current trends of genre-bending in film (Jordan Peele) and tv (Lovecraft Country). 

If you would like to read books by Victor LaValle and Mat Johnson, you can purchase copies here: https://bookshop.org/
For making a donation of The Ballad of Black Tom (along with the other books featured this month: Binti and Can't Stop, Won't Stop) to Books Through Bars, you still have time to purchase the September selections here!: http://www.freebirdbooks.com/shop.html