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The Last Suspicious Holdout - A Conversation with Ladee Hubbard and Dr. Lillian Dunlap
June 5, 2022 [St. Petersburg, FL] - The critically acclaimed author of The Rib King returns with an eagerly anticipated collection of interlocking short stories including the title story written exclusively for this volume, that explore relationships between friends, family and strangers in a Black neighborhood over fifteen years.
Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome Ladee Hubbard to the bookstore to tell us more about her stunning short story collection, The Last Suspicious Holdout! Hubbard will be in conversation with Dr. Lillian Dunlap, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Your Real Stories!
- When: Thursday, June 30, 2022, from 7:00pm-8:00pm
- Where: Tombolo Books – 2153 1st Ave South, St. Petersburg, FL 33712. Parking for the event is
available on Central Avenue. - Free event open to the public
- Light refreshments will be served, and masks are required. To RSVP, visit:
https://tombolobooks.com/?q=h.calevent&eid=18095
The thirteen gripping tales In The Last Suspicious Holdout, the new story collection by award-winning author Ladee Hubbard, deftly chronicle poignant moments in the lives of an African American community located in a “sliver of southern suburbia.”
Spanning from 1992 to 2007, the stories represent a period during which the Black middle-class expanded while stories of "welfare Queens," "crack babies," and "super predators" abounded in the media. In “False Cognates,” a formerly incarcerated attorney struggles with raising the tuition to keep his troubled son in an elite private school. In “There He Go,” a young girl whose mother moves constantly clings to a picture of the grandfather she doesn’t know but invents stories of his greatness. Characters spotlighted in one story reappear in another, providing a stunning testament to the enduring resilience of Black people as they navigate the “post-racial”
period The Last Suspicious Holdout so vividly portrays.
Ladee Hubbard is the author of The Rib King and The Talented Ribkins, which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Times Literary Supplement, Copper Nickel and Callaloo. Hubbard is a recipient of a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She has also received fellowships from MacDowell, Art Omi, the Sacatar Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, Ladee Hubbard currently lives in New Orleans.
"I loved these interconnected stories. They are fiercely intelligent, warm in their own way, and absolutely absorbing. Hubbard has a deft sense of character and community and I really enjoyed piecing together the connections between the collection’s characters. Excellent excellent excellent." — Roxane Gay
For more information about this event and other Tombolo events please contact: Kelsey Jagneaux
Events Coordinator
events@tombolobooks.com
