Left Bank Books presents Renée Watson - Skin & Bones

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Left Bank Books & Kimbilio for Black Fiction presents Renée Watson, #1 New York Times Bestselling author, to discuss her highly anticipated adult debut novel Skin & Bones! Skin & Bones is a soulful and lyrical novel exploring sisterhood, motherhood, faith, love, and ultimately what gets passed down from one generation to the next. Jacqueline Woodson praises this book as "A beautifully poetic meditation on race, history, and parenthood. Renee Watson is brilliantly unafraid, and the reward of that fearlessness is on these pages."

Watson will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on May 20th.

Watson will be in conversation with celebrated St. Louis poet Ariana Benson.

About the Speaker
Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Over the past decade she has authored fifteen young adult books, which have collectively sold more than a million copies. She received a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor for Piecing Me Together and high praise for 1619 Project: Born on the Water. Watson is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets' Education Advisory Council. She is also a writer-in-residence at The Solstice Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing Program. Renée splits her time between New York City and Portland, Oregon.

Ariana Benson is a southern Black ecopoet. Their debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023) won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Leonard Prize. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, Benson has also received the Furious Flower Poetry Prize and the Graybeal Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. Benson earned her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, and also holds Masters of Arts degrees in both Poetic Practice and Scriptwriting, which they earned as a Marshall Scholar. poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, the Yale Review, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Through her writing, she strives to fashion vignettes of Blackness that speak to its infinite depth and richness.

About Skin & Bones
From the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a soulful and lyrical novel exploring sisterhood, motherhood, faith, love, and ultimately what gets passed down from one generation to the next

At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life--between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she's happy in love and in friendship until a confession on her wedding day shifts her world.

Unmoored and grieving a major loss, Lena finds herself trying to teach her daughter self-love while struggling to do so herself. Lena questions everything she's learned about dating, friendship, and motherhood, and through it all, she works tirelessly to bring the oft-forgotten Black history of Oregon to the masses, sidestepping her well-meaning co-workers that don't understand that their good intentions are often offensive and hurtful.

Through Watson's poetic voice, skin & bones is a stirring exploration of who society makes space for and is ultimately a story of heartbreak and healing.

Review Quotes:
"A beautifully poetic meditation on race, history, and parenthood. Renee Watson is brilliantly unafraid, and the reward of that fearlessness is on these pages."-- JACQUELINE WOODSON, National Book Award winner

"A refreshing read, this lyrical story of love and loss is spiritually rejuvenating. Renee Watson's writing is divine."-- KWAME ALEXANDER, author of WHY FATHERS CRY AT NIGHT

"A soulful novel that elegantly laces personal and cultural history through the eyes of a larger-than-life Black woman whose responsibilities to herself and those around her push and pull, shrink and expand. It's the kind of work that exposes matters of the heart with softness and guidance instead of melodrama and pedantry."-- MORGAN JERKINS, New York Times bestselling author of THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING

"Evocative, beautifully written story of friendship, self-love, and community that has captured my heart and dug into my bones."-- LATOYA WATKINS, author of HOLLER, CHILD, longlisted for National Book Award

"Powerful story where each character shines with the divinity and humanity of Black love. An unforgettable reckoning that defies the boundaries and fears that attempt to constrict Black women's bodies and lives. Wise, real, and wondrous, Watson's genius carries our history--past, present, and future--with formidable grace and courage."-- RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS, author of PROMISE