Second Read: The Color Purple with Victoria Bond, Bridgett Davis and Martha Southgate

PLEASE NOTE: This event will take place at The Brooklyn Historical Society's Othmer Library at 128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (corner of Clinton Street).

Second Read is a new BPL Presents series that reevaluates canonical classic and contemporary work and encourages lively debate around books and reading

Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. This is the story of two sisters—one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South—who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life. Our panel, consisting of Victoria Bond, Bridgett Davis and Martha Southgate, discusses how the book reads 35 years after it won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

The co-author of the novel for children Zora and Me, Victoria Bond is a recipient of the American Library Association's Coretta Scott-King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Victoria was also nominated for an Edgar Award in 2011. A Lecturer at John Jay College, The City University of New York, Victoria has been published by outlets including The New Republic, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera America, and New Ohio Review. She lives at the northern tip of Manhattan with her husband and their small son, Keats.

Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers (Little, Brown / January 2019). She is also the author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow (Feminist Press, 2014) and Shifting Through Neutral (Amistad, 2004). As a professor at CUNY’s Baruch College, she teaches creative, film and narrative writing, and directs the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program. She is co-founder and curator for Words@Weeksville, a monthly reading series held at Weeksville Heritage Center in Central Brooklyn. She is also writer/director of the award-winning feature film Naked Acts. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Millions, Salon, O, The Oprah Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, The Root and LitHub. A native of Detroit, she's a graduate of Spelman College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her family.

Martha Southgate is the author of four novels: The Taste of Salt, Third Girl From The Left, The Fall of Rome and Another Way to Dance. Her fiction has won numerous accolades and she has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her nonfiction work has appeared in many publications, most recently The American Scholar and The New York Times Book Review. She has taught at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Sarah Lawrence and she is working towards an MFA in Playwriting at Brooklyn College.