City Lights presents Lakiesha Carr in conversation with Dawnie Walton. Lakiesha Carr discusses her new book “An Autobiography of Skin: A Novel”, published by Pantheon Books. This virtual event was hosted by Peter Maravelis.

You can purchase copies of “An Autobiography of Skin” directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/autobio-of-skin/

Lakiesha Carr graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and received her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded a Maytag Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction and a Jeff and Vicki Edwards Post-graduate Fellowship in Fiction. A journalist and writer from East Texas, she has held various editorial and production positions with CNN, The New York Times, and other media. Her writing has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the DC Commission on Arts & Humanities for nonfiction writing, and the Kimbilio Fellowship for fiction writing.

Dawnie Walton is the author of “The Final Revival of Opal & Nev”, winner of the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Audie Award for Fiction. Her debut novel was also longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was named one of the best books of 2021 by “The Washington Post”, “NPR”, “Esquire”, and former U.S. President Barack Obama. She is the cofounder and editorial director of Ursa, an audio production company celebrating short fiction from underrepresented voices, and is the cohost of its accompanying podcast. Formerly an editor at “Essence” and “Entertainment Weekly”, she has received fellowships from MacDowell and Tin House, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where she has taught a fiction seminar). Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation