Little Movements: A Grown-Up Coming-of-Age in Motion

Description

Debut author Lauren Morrow joins us to discuss Little Movements, a sharp, funny, and deeply perceptive literary novel set in the world of professional dance.

Lauren Morrow joins Book Gang to discuss her satirical novel, Little Movements, which follows Layla, a Black choreographer navigating a fragile marriage, a long-delayed hope of motherhood, and a career-defining opportunity at a prestigious arts institution.

When Layla relocates alone to create a new piece from the ground up, she finds herself confronting not just the physical demands of dance but the subtler pressures of tokenization, institutional expectations, and who gets to define what her work "means."

Drawing from Morrow's background in dance and arts publicity, Little Movements offers an insider's view of how cultural organizations frame progress, how money shapes artistic freedom, and how women—especially Black women—are often asked to carry symbolic weight they never volunteered for.

In this fascinating conversation, we explore:

📚 From MFA to debut novel: Lauren takes us back to the earliest seed of Little Movements, how her time at the Helen Zell Writers' Program shaped the book, and what her path to publication looked like once the manuscript was complete. We also talk candidly about celebrating the "yes" and what it really entails to debut with a literary novel.

📚 Writing the politics of art: We dig into the behind-the-scenes realities of the dance world as a Black woman, including institutional language, and the quiet pressure placed on artists to make their work "say something," for others.

📚 Capturing movement on a page: Lauren shares how she approached putting dance on the page, given its inherent visual and kinetic qualities. We discuss the techniques she used in her prose to make readers feel the movement on the page, even if they haven't danced themselves.

📚📚 BONUS BOOK LIST: Don't miss this week's companion list with These 21 Books About Ballet Took Me Back to the Barre to reserve now to celebrate the arts! Patrons will receive weekly printable checklists for their next library visit!

Meet Lauren Morrow

Lauren Morrow studied dance and creative writing at Connecticut College and earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. She was a Kimbilio Fellow, an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, and the recipient of two Hopwood Awards, among other prizes. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares and The South Carolina Review. She worked in publicity at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and is now a publicity manager at Dutton, Plume, and Tiny Reparations Books. Originally from St. Louis, she lives in Brooklyn.