Author T. Geronimo Johnson Gives Reading

Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate T. Geronimo Johnson will give a reading as part of the Writers@Grinnell creative writing series.

Johnson will speak at 4:15 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14 in the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101. This event is free and open to the public.

Johnson’s work has drawn widespread critical acclaim. Hold It ‘til It Hurts was praised as a “powerful, stylish debut novel” by Publishers Weekly and as “a novel that defies categorization” by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The novel examines two brothers who are black who return from war and learn their adoptive father who is white has died. The brothers are given details about their birth parents.

Johnson’s new novel, Welcome to Braggsville, follows four liberal arts students who attempt to stage a lynching during a Civil War reenactment. The book is scheduled for release Feb. 17, 2015.

Johnson is the director of the Summer Creative Writing Program at the University of California–Berkeley.

Future Writers@Grinnell events will feature novelist Nami Mun, poet Brian Turner, and Alison Bechdel, a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” recipient.