Night Watch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Jayne Anne Phillips, opens in 1874 in the wake of the Civil War. Twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered by a war veteran. There, far from home, they begin to find a path forward, getting swept up in the life of the facility, including the mysterious man they call the Night Watch, the orphan child called Weed, and the remarkable doctor who heads the institution. This brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

Phillips is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Winner of an Arts and Letters Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also been a National Book Award finalist and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Phillips will be in conversation with Krys Boyd of KERA.