Virtual author event
* Tuesday, March 21, 5:30 pm

Women Writing: Our Stories. Our Voices. Our Impact (in Literature & Beyond)

The Love You Save- Acclaimed journalist and human rights activist Goldie Taylor shares the harrowing yet deeply hopeful story of her troubled childhood in East St. Louis—a memoir of family, faith and the power of books.

Aunt Gerald takes in anyone who asks, but the conditions are harsh. For her young niece Goldie Taylor, abandoned by her mother and coping with trauma of her own, life in Gerald’s East St. Louis comes with nothing but a threadbare blanket on the living room floor. But amid the pain and anguish, Goldie discovers a secret. She can find kinship among writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. She can find hope in a nurturing teacher who helps her find her voice. And books, she realizes, can save her life.

Goldie Taylor's debut memoir shines a light on the strictures of race, class and gender in a post–Jim Crow America while offering a nuanced, empathetic portrait of a family in a pitched battle for its very soul.

Goldie Taylor is a journalist, political analyst and human rights activist. She been featured on NBC News, MSNBC, ABC News, CNN, HLN, The Steve Harvey Show, and Good Morning America, as well as NPR's All Things Considered. She has written for Salon, Atlanta Journal Constitution, St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Grio, Huffington Post, and as editor-at-large for The Daily Beast. She lives in Boston.

The Dead Are Gods - From an exciting new literary voice: a memoir that explores grief, Blackness, and recovery after the death of a dear friend. After an unexpected phone call on an early morning in 2018, writer and model Eirinie Carson learned of her best friend Larissa’s death. In the wake of her shock, Eirinie attempts to make sense of the events leading up to Larissa’s death and uncovers startling secrets about her life in the process.

The Dead Are Gods is Eirinie’s striking, intimate, and profoundly moving depiction of life after a sudden loss. Amid navigating moments of intense grief, Eirinie is overwhelmed by her love for Larissa. She finds power in pulling moments of joy from the depths of her emotion. Eirinie’s portrayal of what love feels like after death bursts from the page alongside a timely, honest, and personal exploration of Black love and Black life.

Eirinie Carson is a Black British writer, born to a Jamaican father and Scottish-ish mother and raised in South East London. Her work is published in the Sonora Review and is a frequent contributor to Mother magazine. A member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, Eirinie writes about motherhood, grief, and relationships. Eirinie lives in Northern California with her musician husband and their one dog and two daughters. The Dead are Gods is her first book.