Angela Flournoy came to Portland for the 2025 Portland Book Festival, where she discussed her new novel The Wilderness in conversation with Renée Watson, award-winning author of skin & bones.

The title of The Wilderness refers to what Flournoy describes as the true “coming of age” — instead of the transition out of adolescence, the decades from one’s twenties onward. The book revolves around four friends as they navigate those years, when you confront who you thought you might be as an adult, and what is actually happening in your life: your friendships, romances, success, grief, career, and so much more. The “found family” of long, deep friendship is the center of the book, and Flournoy and Watson discuss the constant choosing that creates and sustains a found family, the ongoing making and remaking that happens over decades of friendship.

Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York. Flournoy’s latest novel is titled The Wilderness.

Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Over the past decade she has authored twenty books for young readers including Black Girl You Are Atlas and Cicely Tyson, which have collectively sold more than a million copies. She received a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor for her novel Piecing Me Together and high praise for 1619 Project: Born on the Water, co-written with Nikole Hannah-Jones. Her debut adult novel, skin & bones, was published May 7th, 2024. 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 splits her time between Portland, Oregon and New York City. Her latest middle grade title is All the Blues in the Sky.