Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Winner of the National Book Award, Jamesby Percival Everett offers a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, who has recently returned to town. Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive promise of the Free States and beyond.

Everett’s most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Everett will be in conversation with Krys Boyd of KERA.