Dialogue: Look Back to Move Forward — How Ancestry Informs Our Writing

Centering Black and Native American voices in American history, authors Alison Hart and Alix Christie share their latest work and discuss how history is more relevant than ever. 

Alison Hart is an author, musician, dancer and music educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work centers on her Black and Indigenous ancestors from New England, healing intergenerational/historical trauma, mixed-race identity, and uncovering the brutal truth of American history. National Book award-winning author Isabel Allende introduced Alison and her debut novel Mostly White (Torrey House Press, 2018) at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. Isabel Allende praised Mostly White as: "So compelling it gave me goosebumps from the very first lines." Other works include a poetry collection, Temp Words (Cosmo Press, 2015) selected poems in Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry in California (Scarlet Tanager, 2016) and her latest novel The In-between Sky (Mumblers Press, 2025). Hart studied theater at Tisch School of The Arts, New York University (B.F.A.), and education at Saint Mary’s College (M.A.).  For more info go to: www.ahartworks.com.

Alix Christie is an American/Canadian author who divides her time between San Francisco and Berlin, Germany.  A longtime journalist, she grew up in California, Montana and British Columbia. Her most recent novel, The Shining Mountains, tells the story of her mixed-race Scottish and indigenous relatives in the 19th century Pacific Northwest. It was hailed as "a generous and spirited novel of the fur trade and the marriage of two worlds" by Debra Magpie Earling, author of The Last Journals of Sacajawea and Perma Red. Christie's debut novel, Gutenberg’s Apprentice, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Prize. Her short fiction has won contests from the Missouri Review and Southwest Review, a Pushcart Prize and been a finalist for the Sunday Times (UK) Short Story Award.