Virtual Book Talk: The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers in conversation with Sarah Burnes

The 2020 National Book Award–nominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.

Author Honorée Fanonne Jeffers tells the story of Ailey Pearl Garfield and her search for belonging in, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Novel.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of five poetry collections, including the 2020 collection The Age of Phillis, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry and the PEN/Voelcker Award. She was a contributor to The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward, and has been published in the Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, and other literary publications. Jeffers was elected into the American Antiquarian Society, whose members include fourteen U.S. presidents, and is Critic at Large for Kenyon Review. She teaches creative writing and literature at University of Oklahoma.