Donna Hemans: THE HOUSE OF PLAIN TRUTH (With Carla Du Pree)
Please join The Ivy Bookshop at Bird in Hand to celebrate the publication of Donna Hemans’ THE HOUSE OF PLAIN TRUTH with a conversation between the author and Carla Du Pree of Baltimore’s CityLit Project! Hemans’ third novel is a lyrical, lush, evocative story about a fractured Jamaican family and a daughter determined to reclaim her home. Inspired by the author’s own family story, this delicate, incisive novel explores the divided loyalties within a family, the true meaning of home, and what one woman must sacrifice to finally get what she wants.
We’re delighted that the Jamaican Association of Maryland will join us at this event.
Donna Hemans is the author of two previous novels, River Woman and Tea By the Sea, which won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. She is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, DC. Born in Jamaica, she lives in Maryland, and received her undergraduate degree in English and Media Studies from Fordham University and an MFA from American University.
Carla Du Pree is a fiction writer, a state and national arts advocate, a literary consultant, and the executive director of the literary nonprofit, CityLit Project, which holds an annual award-winning CityLit Festival. As part of her work with CityLit, she co-founded Scribente Maternum, (a fancy way of saying Writing Mamas) which holds an annual Write Like A Mother Retreat. Her fiction appears in several literary journals. She is the recipient of fiction fellowships from the Peter Bullough Foundation, Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts (founded by Jacqueline Woodson), Rhode Island Writers Colony for Writers of Color (directed by Jason Reynolds), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2x), Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and Poetry Foundation through Furious Flower Poetry Center. She is a Rubys and MSAC grantee. She was awarded the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies’ inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Individual Award and the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Leader for April 2020. She is a member of the Wintergreen Women Writers’ Collective and serves on executive committees of several local, state and national boards, all relating to the arts and with the intention of magnifying diversity and inclusion work. She holds a Master’s from Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars, has three adult children, one grandson and a beau of 45 years.
