New York State Writers Institute to Host a Conversation / Q&A
with Shaker High School Grad, NY Times Bestselling Author Raven Leilani
Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023
7:30 p.m. — Conversation / Q&A
Recital Hall, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Free and open to the public. No registration required.
An emerging star of American fiction, Raven Leilani spent her young adulthood in Latham and attended Shaker High School. Winner
of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Luster (2020), was an instant New York Times bestseller and “Notable Book of the Year.”
It tells the story of a young Black woman who becomes romantically involved with an older white man in an open marriage, and gets entangled in the complexities of his family life. Barack Obama named Luster one of his favorite books of 2020, and the New York Times reviewer said it “reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip; plot suddenly, wildly flying forward like a bike down a hill.”
Cosponsored by the University at Albany English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Program.