Northshire is delighted to host a virtual event with Jocelyn Nicole Johnson author of the acclaimed My Monticello, a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction, in conversation with Northshire staff favorite Ricardo Wilson.

“A badass debut by any measure—nimble, knowing, and electrifying.” —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle

"...'My Monticello' is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it." — The Washington Post

Winner of the Weatherford Award in Fiction - A winner of 2022 Lillian Smith Book Awards

A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.

United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s writing has appeared in Guernica, the Guardian, Kweli, Joyland, phoebe, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. Her short story “Control Negro” was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Roxane Gay, and read live by LeVar Burton as part of PRI’s Selected Shorts series. Johnson has been a fellow at Hedgebrook, Tin House Summer Workshops, and VCCA. A veteran public-school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Ricardo Wilson is the author of An Apparent Horizon and Other Stories and The Nigrescent Beyond: Mexico, the United States, and the Psychic Vanishing of Blackness. He is an assistant professor of English at Williams College and the director of Outpost, a residency for creative writers of color from the United States and Latin America.

If you have questions about this or any Northshire event, please e-mail us at events@northshire.com.

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