March 28 7:00 pm
A “literary icon” (according to Oprah Daily), Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of the most acclaimed authors of our era is bringing the book tour of his newest novel, James, to the Studebaker Theater. Please join Exile in Bookville in the Studebaker Theater on Thursday, March 28th at 7pm to help celebrate Percival Everett’s new novel, James. Percival will be in conversation with Gabriel Bump, author of The New Naturals.
About James
When the enslaved 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, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
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Signed copies of James are available for preorder through Exile in Bookville’s website and will also be available for purchase at the event. We are offering a 10% discount for preorder and onsite purchases of James. We will also have signed copies of a select few Percival Everett backlist titles available for sale at the event.
PLEASE NOTE: Percival will not be signing or personalizing copies at the event.
Signed copies of Gabriel Bump’s novel, The New Naturals, will be available for purchase at the event.
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About Percival Everett
PERCIVAL EVERETT’s most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has a poetry collection forthcoming with Red Hen Press. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC.
About Gabriel Bump
GABRIEL BUMP grew up in South Shore, Chicago. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award. His new novel, The New Naturals, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, a Washington Post Notable Book of 2023, and Boston Globe Best Book of the Year. Bump teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.