And Here’s My Return Story with Sheila O’Connor
A return story in which author Sheila O’Connor describes uncovering the story of her maternal grandmother who was incarcerated in the 1930s for being pregnant. This harrowing tale is told in O’Connor’s powerful new novel Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts and Fictions.
Sheila O’Connor is the award-winning author of six novels. Her new genre-bending book for adults, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts and Fictions, combines flash forms, archival documents, memoir, and historical research, to reconstruct the buried history of incarcerated girls. Her books for adults include Where No Gods Came and Tokens of Grace, and her novels for readers of all ages include Until Tomorrow, Mr. Marsworth, Sparrow Road, and Keeping Safe the Stars.
Awards for her novels include the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, Minnesota Book Award, International Reading Award, and Midwest Booksellers Award among others. Her books have been included in Best Books of the Year by Booklist, VOYA, Book Page, Bank Street, Chicago Public Library, and Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers.
A multi-genre writer, her work has been anthologized in Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers, The Next Parish Over, Mothers and Daughters, and Under Purple Skies. Her short stories, poems, and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies including Bellingham Review, Minnesota Monthly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Baltimore Review, Great River Review, Blue Earth Review, and others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Sheila O’Connor has been awarded Bush Fellowships (2003, 2009), Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants (2004, 2015, 2019), and a McKnight Fellowship. She has also been the recipient of artist residencies from The Studios of Key West, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Center, and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Hamline University where she serves as Fiction Editor for Water~Stone Review. She is also a member of the core faculty at the Converse low-residency MFA Program.
Don’t miss this inspiring talk about memories, secrets, and the power of our stories. Listen in and then let Sheila and I know in the comments what resonated with you the most!
Check out Sheila’s website at www.sheilaoconnor.com to shee where she’s speaking next. Get the The Evidence of V at your favorite bookseller.
xoxo!
Jacque
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