This year’s Pasadena Festival of Women Authors will be presented online starting Saturday, April 10.
The festival will feature New York Times Bestselling author Kiley Reid and five other acclaimed women authors: Amity Gaige, Alka Joshi, Lydia Millet, Dalia Sofer and C Pam Zhang.
“Such a Fun Age,” Kiley Reid’s debut novel, is a complex, layered page-turner from a provocative new voice. It’s a story about race and privilege, centered on a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned white employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick, the book was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, The Chicago Tribute, Slate, Parade, Kirkus Reviews, and many others. It won the African American Literary Award and was a finalist for The New York Public Library’s 2020 Young Lion’s Fiction Award, The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and The NAACP Image Award. Finally, “Such a Fun Age” was chosen as Best Debut by Goodreads readers. Lena Waithe bought the film rights, and “Such a Fun Age” is currently in production.
Amity Gaige wrote “Sea Wife,” in which a husband, his reluctant wife, and their small children embark on a year-long sea voyage in a boat they barely know how to sail. Trouble follows in a twist that will both thrill and confound the reader. A sophisticated page-turner, “Sea Wife” explores marital discord, parenthood, literary ambition, and politics. “Sea Wife,” named a New York Times Notable Book, is told from the side-by-side perspective of both husband and wife, providing a riveting account of the same event.
The author of three other novels, Gaige was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, fellowships at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction. Gaige earned her bachelor’s degree from Brown and her master of fine arts degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The longtime Visiting Writer at Amherst College now teaches creative writing at Yale.
Alka Joshi’s debut, “The Henna Artist,” was a New York Times bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick. “The Henna Artist” gives the reader a vivid, sensory-laden peek into India of the 1950s as it follows a young woman running away from her abusive husband. She reinvents herself as a henna artist and keeper of the elite class’s secrets. However, all of her accomplishments are threatened with the surprise arrival of her blackmail-inclined husband and the sister she never knew she had.
Joshi was born in India and raised in the U.S. from the age of nine. She has a bachelor of arts degree from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of Arts. She runs an advertising and marketing consulting firm. She has lived in France and Italy and currently lives in Pacific Grove.
A modern retelling of Noah’s Ark, Lydia Millet’s novel, “A Children’s Bible,” follows a group of idle, wealthy friends and their feral children. The families have rented a mansion for the summer, when a massive hurricane hits, plunging them into unimaginable chaos. It is, says Vulture, “that rare and precious thing: a funny dystopia.”
“A Children’s Bible” was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of the Year, and judged one of the best novels of the year by Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, BBC, and many others. “A Children’s Bible” also made the 2020 Goodreads shortlist.
From bestselling author Dalia Sofer, “Man of My Time” is the story of an Iranian man who loses his soul bit by bit after he joins the Iranian revolution. Estranged from his family who has fled to New York, he reunites with them briefly and agrees to take his father’s ashes back to Iran. This forces him to reckon with a lifetime filled with betrayal, in service to a regime that has turned him into a man he no longer recognizes.
“Man of My Time” was named a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
C Pam Zhang’s electrifying debut novel, “How Much of These Hills Is Gold,” is the tale of two newly orphaned Chinese children during the twilight of the American Gold Rush. They’re on the run across a forbidding landscape – trying not just to survive but also to find a home. Both intimate and epic, it’s an adventure story, an exploration of race and belonging, and the announcement of an important new voice in American literature.
A national bestseller and a GOOP Book Club Pick, “How Much of These Hills” was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. It was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and The Washington Post, one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020, and one of NPR’s best books of the year. Zhang was chosen as a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree.
Each of these authors will share her personal journey and answer questions in a video recording. 2020 donors will receive four weeks of early access to the 2021 videos throughout April. If you’re not a 2020 donor, you can donate $25 and receive early access to all six videos.
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