In celebration of Melissa Valentine's book, The Names of All the Flowers, Valentine and Butts will discuss writing and community organizing. 

Set in rapidly gentrifying 1990s Oakland, The Names of All the Flowers, explores siblinghood, adolescence and grief in a family shattered by loss. Published by Feminist Press.

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Melissa Valentine is an award-winning writer from Oakland, CA whose work explores themes of race, trauma and healing. Her debut memoir, The Names of All the Flowers, was the 2019 winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. She is a 2020 artist fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts in Nonfiction Literature. Valentine has also been a fellow at the San Francisco Writers Grotto. Her writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Guernica, Jezebel and Apogee among others. She is a Visiting Professor at University of California at Santa Cruz. 

Amber Butts is a storyteller, cultural strategist and grief worker who believes that Black folks are already whole. Her work asks big and small questions about how we move towards actualizing spaces that center tenderness, nuance and joy, while living in a world reliant on our terror. Their writing has appeared in NPR, Essence, Zora Magazine and metoo, amongst others. She is currently at work on a speculative fiction novel that writes elders into the future.

Connect

Melissa Valentine - Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

Amber Butts - Website | Instagram | Twitter