Join us on Wednesday, August 9th at 7pm PT when Anita Gail Jones joins us to celebrate her debut novel, The Peach Seed, with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/ypfseoiQHfQ
Praise for The Peach Seed
"Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement....[she] manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love."
--Publishers Weekly
"On the surface, The Peach Seed seems mostly about inheritance and tradition, but this engrossing novel is also about partnership in the Black community--historically and now: we are children of strong women and strong men. Inarguably, Black men take a beating in American society, but The Peach Seed reminds us that we often survive our scars. You will not want to put this engrossing story down, as Anita Gail Jones introduces a whole family of survivors, planted and deeply rooted in Albany, Georgia. The Peach Seed presents a family replete with intergenerational struggles, triumphs of compassion, and fine examples of Black male bravery, compassion, resilience, and persistence, as they love their women and children and as they demand as much manhood as they can muster for themselves. The Peach Seed is a surprising book, a refreshing story, and a novel that restores Black men to their place in the family, offering an alternative to the mythic, stereotypic matriarchy by acknowledging Black men where they stand."
--A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress and Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
"Anita Gail Jones's prodigious talents are on remarkable display in The Peach Seed. Her rendering of a fictional world, whether the exterior landscapes of Georgia and West Africa or the rich portraits of the interiors of southern homes, is truly impressive. Her dialogue resonates with clarity, compassion, and authenticity, rarely seen on the pages of fiction. She braids stories of the struggles and perseverance of African-Americans in distant centuries with those of more recent eras with remarkable dexterity, and her characters are thoroughly engrossing. This immensely well-crafted debut novel, gut-wrenching at times, hopeful at others, is a beautiful achievement.
--Jeffrey Colvin, award-winning author of Africaville
About The Peach Seed
A multigenerational novel and an epic debut that explores the origins of a south Georgia family's tradition and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle the legacies of America's Civil Rights Movement and the far-reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, S.C.
On a routine day, Fletcher Dukes drives his older sister, Olga, who is losing her sight, to do weekly grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. On the liquor aisle, they pass a tall woman, head bowed reading a wine label. Fletcher smells her perfume first, then sees a strawberry birthmark on the nape of a woman's neck and knows at once that this is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Fletcher and Altovise risked their lives together in sit-ins and marches, but their plan to marry was interrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent. The two were jailed in different towns leading to a separation that would ultimately span 52 years. Before Altovise's departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800's Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkey--the Peach Seed Monkey that forms the talismanic tradition, the rite of passage, that each generation of Dukes man gifts to his son on his 13th birthday--along with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition that like the Civil Rights Movement irrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including a Fletcher's daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
About Anita Gail Jones
Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist and writer, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. Her fine arts degree is from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the nineties, writing and illustrating children's stories led Anita to oral-tradition storytelling. She worked in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist in residence and tailored storytelling programs for libraries, corporations, and private clients.
About Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a George Garrett New Writing Award; was a California and Northern California Book Award finalist, a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Finalist and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing finalist; was nominated for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize; and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Book Review; and other publications. She lives in Oakland with her family.
show less
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/ypfseoiQHfQ
Praise for The Peach Seed
"Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement....[she] manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love."
--Publishers Weekly
"On the surface, The Peach Seed seems mostly about inheritance and tradition, but this engrossing novel is also about partnership in the Black community--historically and now: we are children of strong women and strong men. Inarguably, Black men take a beating in American society, but The Peach Seed reminds us that we often survive our scars. You will not want to put this engrossing story down, as Anita Gail Jones introduces a whole family of survivors, planted and deeply rooted in Albany, Georgia. The Peach Seed presents a family replete with intergenerational struggles, triumphs of compassion, and fine examples of Black male bravery, compassion, resilience, and persistence, as they love their women and children and as they demand as much manhood as they can muster for themselves. The Peach Seed is a surprising book, a refreshing story, and a novel that restores Black men to their place in the family, offering an alternative to the mythic, stereotypic matriarchy by acknowledging Black men where they stand."
--A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress and Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
"Anita Gail Jones's prodigious talents are on remarkable display in The Peach Seed. Her rendering of a fictional world, whether the exterior landscapes of Georgia and West Africa or the rich portraits of the interiors of southern homes, is truly impressive. Her dialogue resonates with clarity, compassion, and authenticity, rarely seen on the pages of fiction. She braids stories of the struggles and perseverance of African-Americans in distant centuries with those of more recent eras with remarkable dexterity, and her characters are thoroughly engrossing. This immensely well-crafted debut novel, gut-wrenching at times, hopeful at others, is a beautiful achievement.
--Jeffrey Colvin, award-winning author of Africaville
About The Peach Seed
A multigenerational novel and an epic debut that explores the origins of a south Georgia family's tradition and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle the legacies of America's Civil Rights Movement and the far-reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, S.C.
On a routine day, Fletcher Dukes drives his older sister, Olga, who is losing her sight, to do weekly grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. On the liquor aisle, they pass a tall woman, head bowed reading a wine label. Fletcher smells her perfume first, then sees a strawberry birthmark on the nape of a woman's neck and knows at once that this is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Fletcher and Altovise risked their lives together in sit-ins and marches, but their plan to marry was interrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent. The two were jailed in different towns leading to a separation that would ultimately span 52 years. Before Altovise's departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800's Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkey--the Peach Seed Monkey that forms the talismanic tradition, the rite of passage, that each generation of Dukes man gifts to his son on his 13th birthday--along with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition that like the Civil Rights Movement irrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including a Fletcher's daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
About Anita Gail Jones
Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist and writer, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. Her fine arts degree is from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the nineties, writing and illustrating children's stories led Anita to oral-tradition storytelling. She worked in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist in residence and tailored storytelling programs for libraries, corporations, and private clients.
About Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a George Garrett New Writing Award; was a California and Northern California Book Award finalist, a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Finalist and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing finalist; was nominated for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize; and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Book Review; and other publications. She lives in Oakland with her family.
Join us on Wednesday, August 9th at 7pm PT when Anita Gail Jones joins us to celebrate her debut novel, The Peach Seed, with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/ypfseoiQHfQ
Praise for The Peach Seed
"Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement....[she] manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love."
--Publishers Weekly
"On the surface, The Peach Seed seems mostly about inheritance and tradition, but this engrossing novel is also about partnership in the Black community--historically and now: we are children of strong women and strong men. Inarguably, Black men take a beating in American society, but The Peach Seed reminds us that we often survive our scars. You will not want to put this engrossing story down, as Anita Gail Jones introduces a whole family of survivors, planted and deeply rooted in Albany, Georgia. The Peach Seed presents a family replete with intergenerational struggles, triumphs of compassion, and fine examples of Black male bravery, compassion, resilience, and persistence, as they love their women and children and as they demand as much manhood as they can muster for themselves. The Peach Seed is a surprising book, a refreshing story, and a novel that restores Black men to their place in the family, offering an alternative to the mythic, stereotypic matriarchy by acknowledging Black men where they stand."
--A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress and Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
"Anita Gail Jones's prodigious talents are on remarkable display in The Peach Seed. Her rendering of a fictional world, whether the exterior landscapes of Georgia and West Africa or the rich portraits of the interiors of southern homes, is truly impressive. Her dialogue resonates with clarity, compassion, and authenticity, rarely seen on the pages of fiction. She braids stories of the struggles and perseverance of African-Americans in distant centuries with those of more recent eras with remarkable dexterity, and her characters are thoroughly engrossing. This immensely well-crafted debut novel, gut-wrenching at times, hopeful at others, is a beautiful achievement.
--Jeffrey Colvin, award-winning author of Africaville
About The Peach Seed
A multigenerational novel and an epic debut that explores the origins of a south Georgia family's tradition and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle the legacies of America's Civil Rights Movement and the far-reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, S.C.
On a routine day, Fletcher Dukes drives his older sister, Olga, who is losing her sight, to do weekly grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. On the liquor aisle, they pass a tall woman, head bowed reading a wine label. Fletcher smells her perfume first, then sees a strawberry birthmark on the nape of a woman's neck and knows at once that this is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Fletcher and Altovise risked their lives together in sit-ins and marches, but their plan to marry was interrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent. The two were jailed in different towns leading to a separation that would ultimately span 52 years. Before Altovise's departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800's Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkey--the Peach Seed Monkey that forms the talismanic tradition, the rite of passage, that each generation of Dukes man gifts to his son on his 13th birthday--along with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition that like the Civil Rights Movement irrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including a Fletcher's daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
About Anita Gail Jones
Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist and writer, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. Her fine arts degree is from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the nineties, writing and illustrating children's stories led Anita to oral-tradition storytelling. She worked in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist in residence and tailored storytelling programs for libraries, corporations, and private clients.
About Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a George Garrett New Writing Award; was a California and Northern California Book Award finalist, a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Finalist and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing finalist; was nominated for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize; and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Book Review; and other publications. She lives in Oakland with her family.
read more
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/ypfseoiQHfQ
Praise for The Peach Seed
"Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement....[she] manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love."
--Publishers Weekly
"On the surface, The Peach Seed seems mostly about inheritance and tradition, but this engrossing novel is also about partnership in the Black community--historically and now: we are children of strong women and strong men. Inarguably, Black men take a beating in American society, but The Peach Seed reminds us that we often survive our scars. You will not want to put this engrossing story down, as Anita Gail Jones introduces a whole family of survivors, planted and deeply rooted in Albany, Georgia. The Peach Seed presents a family replete with intergenerational struggles, triumphs of compassion, and fine examples of Black male bravery, compassion, resilience, and persistence, as they love their women and children and as they demand as much manhood as they can muster for themselves. The Peach Seed is a surprising book, a refreshing story, and a novel that restores Black men to their place in the family, offering an alternative to the mythic, stereotypic matriarchy by acknowledging Black men where they stand."
--A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress and Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
"Anita Gail Jones's prodigious talents are on remarkable display in The Peach Seed. Her rendering of a fictional world, whether the exterior landscapes of Georgia and West Africa or the rich portraits of the interiors of southern homes, is truly impressive. Her dialogue resonates with clarity, compassion, and authenticity, rarely seen on the pages of fiction. She braids stories of the struggles and perseverance of African-Americans in distant centuries with those of more recent eras with remarkable dexterity, and her characters are thoroughly engrossing. This immensely well-crafted debut novel, gut-wrenching at times, hopeful at others, is a beautiful achievement.
--Jeffrey Colvin, award-winning author of Africaville
About The Peach Seed
A multigenerational novel and an epic debut that explores the origins of a south Georgia family's tradition and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle the legacies of America's Civil Rights Movement and the far-reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, S.C.
On a routine day, Fletcher Dukes drives his older sister, Olga, who is losing her sight, to do weekly grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. On the liquor aisle, they pass a tall woman, head bowed reading a wine label. Fletcher smells her perfume first, then sees a strawberry birthmark on the nape of a woman's neck and knows at once that this is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Fletcher and Altovise risked their lives together in sit-ins and marches, but their plan to marry was interrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent. The two were jailed in different towns leading to a separation that would ultimately span 52 years. Before Altovise's departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800's Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkey--the Peach Seed Monkey that forms the talismanic tradition, the rite of passage, that each generation of Dukes man gifts to his son on his 13th birthday--along with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition that like the Civil Rights Movement irrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including a Fletcher's daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
About Anita Gail Jones
Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist and writer, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. Her fine arts degree is from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the nineties, writing and illustrating children's stories led Anita to oral-tradition storytelling. She worked in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist in residence and tailored storytelling programs for libraries, corporations, and private clients.
About Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a George Garrett New Writing Award; was a California and Northern California Book Award finalist, a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Finalist and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing finalist; was nominated for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize; and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Book Review; and other publications. She lives in Oakland with her family.
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