Boston Book Festival in East Boston 2018

In recent novels by this quartet of superb writers, the truth is either difficult to define, slippery to grasp, or impossible to face. In Lambda Literary Award-winner Sara Farizan’s Here to Stay, Bijan is on the verge of basketball stardom and hard-won popularity at his prep school--until an online bully paints him as a terrorist and forces him to address bigotry he had hoped to ignore. In Mark Oshiro’s debut novel Anger Is a Gift, Moss, who lost his father to police brutality, must stand up and speak truth to power when his school perpetuates systemic violence and white supremacy. School violence also factors in Kody Keplinger’s That’s Not What Happened, in which Lee, an eyewitness to a school shooting, finally feels compelled to tell the truth even when it risks disrupting the tidy narrative her small community has been telling itself. And finally, in Printz Award-winner An Na’s A Place Between Breaths, the truth may be more painful than it’s possible to bear, as young researcher Grace strives to find a cure for the schizophrenia that claimed her mother, even as she fears she herself may be succumbing to mental illness. Moderator Candace McDuffie will lead a heartfelt and honest discussion among these talented writers.