Hi there--just wanted to drop by your page and invite you personally to our first-ever She Writes Boston meetup, celebrating She Writes' one-year anniversary! The Boston gathering will be hosted by none other than Jaclyn Friedman, author of "Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (and one of Publishers' Weekly's Top 100 Books of 2009)," and visionary leader of Women, Action Media (WAM!). At the meetup writers will take part in the She Writes "Book Communion," where attendees arrive with one book, their own or another She Writers', new or gently used, and leave with another book as a meaningfully way to support one another's work. We will also be blowing out a candle and making a wish for our upcoming writing year -- along with She Writers gathering in 16 cities around the country. I hope you will be part of this historic (well, at least kind of cool) occasion, and RSVP now to Jaclyn here.

10th Anniversary Edition
"Bernice L. McFadden's first novel begins with the brief, poetic description of a crime so startling that the reader is helplessly drawn in, as if a bright red door stood ajar on a bleak and forbidding house. Pearl Taylor's daughter, Jude, has been found murdered and mutilated near a field at the edge of town. "The murder had white man written all over it," writes McFadden. "But no one would say it above a whisper. It was 1940. It was Bigelow, Arkansas. It was a black child. Need any more be said?" In the years that follow, Pearl catches sight of Jude in so many strangers that when Sugar Lacey comes to town and sets up her unwholesome "business" in the house next door, she doesn't know whether to believe what she sees in Sugar's face: a striking similarity to Jude, dead 15 years. In her sedate but supple prose--rising at times to a light, unforced lyricism in the description of landscape or character--the author perfectly renders the closed and protective society of a small Southern town, the superstitions, gossip, and prying."

Praise for the novels of Bernice L. McFadden:

"Searing and expertly imagined." - Toni Morrison

"Vivid." - The New York Times

"Eloquent..." (McFadden) is a talent worth watching." - The Washington Post

"Sweeping and intense" - Susan Straight author of A Million Nightengales

"This very American story is fascinating; it is also heart-breaking,
thought-provoking, and beautifully written." --Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of The Scenic Route


In order to commemorate the 10th Anniversary I'm asking that you purchase a copy of SUGAR for yourself, a friend or family member. And yes, KINDLE purchases count.