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April Reynolds on The Shape of Dreams, Grief, Reading and Community

Frank Schaeffer talks with novelist April Reynolds about The Shape of Dreams, her novel set in East Harlem during the crack and AIDS epidemics of the 1980s. Their conversation moves through reading, writing, childhood in South Dallas, the Black church, grief, parenthood, neighborhood life, storytelling, and what it means to recognize the people around us as neighbors.

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APRIL REYNOLDS is the author of the novel Knee-Deep in Wonder, which won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award and the PEN American Center: Beyond Margins Award. She co-wrote The Red Rooster Cookbook with Marcus Samuelson and is co-editor, with Henry Louis Gates Jr., of The Toni Morrison Reader and The Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Reynolds has taught creative writing at New York University and the 92nd Street Y, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. A former resident of East Harlem, she now lives in Astoria, Queens.

Earlier Event: August 28
The Psalms, Depression and Honest Faith with Richard Bruxvoort Colligan
Later Event: September 18
Daisy Fancourt, PhD