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Visiting Author – Cynthia J. Sylvester with Timothy Schaffert – The Half-White Album
April 8 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
On Monday, April 8th, Francie & Finch Bookshop will be welcoming author Cynthia J. Sylvester! Cynthia will be joined in conversation with Timothy Schaffert about her debut novel The Half-White Album, published by the University of New Mexico Press.
Purchase a copy of The Half-White Album HERE
About the Book:
The Half-White Album – This powerful debut collection explores lives lived between worlds. Sylvester masterfully weaves together fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to give readers a poignant though fractured view of her characters’ lives, their loves, and their struggles. Told from the perspective of an urban Native, the work details a journey led by the nomadic band, the Covers. It is an experience meant to heal generational trauma and bring back into the light people who may otherwise be forgotten. At its heart, The Half-White Album is a healing ceremony of the author’s own creation, a process grounded in music that celebrates what it is to be human and imperfect and to love imperfectly.
About the Author:
Cynthia J. Sylvester is an enrolled member of the Diné, born into the Kiyaa’áanii Clan for the Bilagáana Clan. She is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her flash fiction and short stories have appeared in ABQ in Print, Leon Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, As Us Journal, and Bosque–The Magazine, among others.
Praise:
“The Half-White Album is an astounding healing performance of soulful losses and strong-hearted connections within Diné families, friends, and a people. Told through a multitude of carefully curated genres, Cynthia Sylvester’s debut collection shares a song of restoration and grounding, of humor and tragedy, of ancestors and the individuals who live through them today.”–Natanya Ann Pulley, author of With Teeth
“The Half-White Album is a stunning powerhouse of literary music! Sylvester writes with deep heart and compassion, introducing us to characters we can’t help but love, even as they fall. Her lush, gorgeous language is a song that heals not only the story but also the reader.”–Susan Power, author of Sacred Wilderness
This compelling debut collection explores liminal spaces, love, trauma and healing through poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Sylvester’s writing is radiant, the musicality is visceral and the voices are captivating and prismatic.
—Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine