Quincy Flowers’s novel-in-process, Canebrake is about moving beyond social and political limitation into unknown territory, preserving ancestral knowledge while crafting a new legacy, yearning for connection with the likeminded, and the staggering reality of isolation as the price of success.

Join us as the Brooklyn-based writer discusses his historical inspirations for the work and gives us the rare opportunity to hear excerpts before its completion. After the reading, the floor will open up for a lively Q&A.

Moved by the legends of African flight and ancestral knowledge, Flowers offers us a story of historical significance. His research and awareness of the essential need for spaces for leisure, recreation, and connection with the African American community – such as Sag Harbor, Oak Bluff on Martha’s Vineyard, and Idlewild, Michigan – are woven into the lines of Canebrake.

Canebrake follows its protagonist from his upbringing on a family farm on two hundred acres in Canebrake, Georgia to Detroit, Michigan, where he launches an engineering career at General Motors as the riots of July 1967 loom. In his private life, he yearns for a connection to a community with shared values and experiences beyond his upbringing in the segregated South and the racially divided middle class of Motor City. Not finding one naturally, he organizes a summer retreat on his inherited land in the Canebrake.

Members: Free with RSVP
Non-Members: $10