Award-winning author Tayari Jones joins the Books & Ideas lineup with Oprah’s latest Book Club pick! The author of four novels, Jones’ previous work, An American Marriage, appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup; and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award. With starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and BookPage to go with its Oprah’s Book Club designation, Kin is already one of the most talked about novels of the season. This unforgettable book follows two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy. Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbours since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. This is an engrossing and emotionally rich work from one of the most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction. Jones is joined on-stage by Kimberly Bain, Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at UBC. Books will be for sale at the event from Book Warehouse, a division of Black Bond Books, with an audience Q+A and book signing after the talk. We do our best to make our events low-barrier, accessible experiences for our community. A limited number of accessibly priced tickets are available for purchase. To discuss other ways we can make these events more accessible to you, please reach out to us at boxoffice@writersfest.bc.ca or 604-681-6330. About Books & Ideas Launched in January 2025, Books & Ideas is an event series from the Vancouver Writers Fest, bringing literary talent and thought-provoking conversations to Granville Island—home of the Writers Fest’s celebrated annual literary festival—from January to June. With an intimate theatre venue and a pop-up bar for socializing, attendees are invited to connect more deeply with other members of the local literary community, and meet the esteemed authors who grace the stage, in a modern space for exchanging ideas. Participants and Speakers Tayari Jones TAYARI JONES is the author of four novels, most recently Kin. Her previous novel, An American Marriage, was an Oprah’s Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and lives in Atlanta. Kimberly Bain KIMBERLY BAIN is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia—Vancouver. Her most pressing and urgent concerns have consolidated around questions of the history, theory, and philosophy of the African diaspora.