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    Torch Literary Arts with Black Pearl Books presents the Wildfire Reading Series featuring Renée Watson, author of All the Blues in the Sky. Join us for a reading, conversation, Q&A, and book signing.

    This event is free and open to the public. Donations are appreciated.

    #1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Honor author Renée Watson explores friendship, loss, and life with grief in this poignant new novel in verse and vignettes.

    Sage's thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend, and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dreams with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn't predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life -- and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all. In accessible, engaging verse and prose, this is an important story of a girl's journey to heal, grow, and forgive herself. To read it is to see how many shades there are in grief, and to know that someone understands.

    Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novel, Piecing Me Together, received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books include the Ryan Hart series, Some Places More Than Others, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, cowritten with Ilyasah Shabazz, Watch Us Rise, co-written with Ellen Hagan, and Love Is a Revolution, as well as acclaimed picture books: Summer Is Here, Maya's Song, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, written with Nikole Hannah-Jones, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, and Harlem's Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Renée splits her time between Portland, Oregon, and New York City.

    Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. TORCH has featured work by Colleen J. McElroy, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

    This program is made possible with support from the Austin Cultural Arts Division, the Burdine Johnson Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Black Pearl Books.

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