Join Square Books and Kiese Laymon for an evening filled with storytelling, reflection, and community in celebration of the beloved Mississippi author’s debut children’s picture book, City Summer, Country Summer. The event will take place on Friday, April 4 at 5 pm at The Powerhouse.
Due to high anticipated demand and limited capacity, the event is ticketed. Tickets are free and are available in-store at all Square Books locations, online, or by phone. One ticket per person (adult or child). A bundle, including a free ticket and a signed copy of the book is also available for purchase. The event will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Copies of City Summer, Country Summer will be available to buy at the event.
“On the ground of that garden, covered in vegetables and dirt, coated in laughter, I want to say that the Mississippi and New York in our Black boy bodies were indistinguishable.”
City Summer, Country Summer is a lyrical picture book from the award-winning author of Heavy, about three Black boys who form a deep connection during a transformative summer trip down South to visit family. Watched over and given space to discover by Grandmama and Mama Lara, New York, Country, and little C find camaraderie in their contrasts and all the unspoken things between them while playing games of marco polo in the thick garden and sledding on cardboard by the underpass.
With text brimming with love by award-winning author Kiese Laymon and deeply evocative illustrations by Ashley Franklin, City Summer, Country Summer illuminates the tenuous and tender bonds of friendship Black boys forge with one another.
Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the genre-bending novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. He was also the recipient of the 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard and a MacArthur Genius grant. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Rice University.
