Join City Books and author Farzana Doctor for an on-line launch of her new title, The Beauty of Us, on September 17, 2024, from 7:00-8:00 PM. The hour will consist of an interview with Farzana and a reading from the book.
The event is free, but registration is encouraged. You can find the Eventbrite link here.
Attendees who register in advance will be eligible for a drawing of signed books or City Books merchandise at the end of the event. Attendees may also submit questions for the author in advance to citybookspgh@gmail.com.
Farzana Doctor is a writer, activist, and psychotherapist whose prolific body of work includes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has received the 2012 Lambda Literary Award; 2020 Amnesty International Readers’ Choice Selection; 2021 Choice Award from Planned Parenthood; 2022 McMaster University Alumni Gallery Inductee; 2023 Freedom to Read Award from The Writers’ Union of Canada. The Beauty of Us is her seventh book.
Summary of The Beauty of Us:
Masterfully crafted, The Beauty of Us is a gripping novel about surviving hardship, the power of friendship, and growing up.
After 15-year-old Zahabiya’s father remarries, she can’t wait to leave home and convinces him to send her away to boarding school. She joins a clique of smart students but isn’t sure if she measures up or how to read the mixed messages from a guy she’s crushing on.
Seventeen-year-old Leesa has been at Thornton since middle school after her parents’ messy divorce. She’s been climbing the school’s social ladder with equal measures of meanness and manipulation. She’s also guarding a big secret that she has to work overtime to keep from her friends.
Fresh out of university, this is Nahla’s first real teaching job, and she’s drowning. She has her distractions though: the flirty art teacher and a cryptic notebook left behind by her deceased predecessor, Mademoiselle Leblanc.
Zahabiya and her friends — all racialized girls and victims of Leesa’s bullying — uncover Leesa’s secret. Nahla, too, is embroiled in her own mystery, assisted by Mademoiselle Leblanc’s ghost. Each is indelibly changed by what they learn.
For further information about the event, please contact Arlan at citybookspgh@gmail.com or by phone at 412-321-7323 (READ).