In this week's episode, authors Kim Coleman Foote and Toni Ann Johnson talk about fictionalizing their families' difficult and messy history to create dark, heartfelt, and sometimes funny novels.
Kim Coleman Foote is the author of the acclaimed novel, Coleman Hill, which blends fact and fiction about her family’s Great Migration journey to suburban New Jersey, where Kim grew up. The novel was a finalist for the Carol Shields Prize and NAACP Image Award, among others, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Additional honors include literature fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Kimbilio; residencies at Hedgebrook, Yaddo, and MacDowell; and a Fulbright Fellowship to Ghana, where Kim conducted fieldwork for her second novel, Salt Water Sister. Forthcoming from SJP Lit in 2027, the novel explores women’s resistance to enslavement in the 1700s and a fight for reparations in the present day.
Toni Ann Johnson is the winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction for Light Skin Gone to Waste, which was selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. The book, a work of autobiographical fiction based on Johnson's family, was also shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize and nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Johnson's novella Homegoing(about the same family) won Accents Publishing's inaugural novella contest. Her novel Remedy for a Broken Angel earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. Her newest book, But Where's Home? is Johnson's third installment of the "Arrington Family" saga, and won the Screen Door Press Prize for fiction.
Resources:
“How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell about It (Vauxhall, NJ, c. 1949)”
Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.
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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ.
The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell.
Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.
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