An Indigenous bestselling author will do a Q&A at a Pittsburg, Kansas bookstore on November 4. Her new novel, “Blood Sisters”, is set in nearby Picher, Oklahoma – “legally” stolen Native land and the site of man-made environmental devastation.
FULL MEDIA RELEASE
PITTSBURG, KANSAS – On Saturday, November 4, 2023, 5 p.m., Books & Burrow, located at 212 S. Broadway, Pittsburg, Kansas 66762, kicks off their month-long programming honoring Native American Heritage Month with an author Q&A featuring Indigenous writer and Miami, Oklahoma native Vanessa Lillie.
The in-depth conversation features Lillie’s new release “Blood Sisters”, a riveting thriller AND will explore the critical topics of MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People), “legally” stolen Native land, and the environmental devastation that are illuminated in the book.
“Blood Sisters” was released on October 31. Copies will be available for purchase in-store, online, and
at the event.
AUTHOR BIO: Vanessa is the author of the bestselling thrillers “Little Voices” (October 2019) and “For the Best” (September 2020). She also co-authored the instant bestselling and ITW award nominated Audible Original Young Rich Widows (April 2022), with 20,000 reviews – the sequel forthcoming.
With fifteen years of marketing and communications experience, Vanessa was a columnist for the Providence Journal and hosts an Instagram Live show with crime fiction authors. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma living on Narragansett land in Rhode Island.
Author Vanessa Lillie recently shared more insight into the “Blood Sisters” setting with readers:
“Picher, Oklahoma, one town over from where I grew up (in Miami – pronounced mi-am-MUH), in the very northeast corner of Oklahoma, the land mostly belonged to the Quapaw tribe after they were forced from their original homelands… but when iron and zinc were discovered there in early 1900s, the land was legally stolen and put “in trust” so mining companies could come in and dig all those minerals out of the earth… Once the industry went bust, Picher and the people were left with the aftermath, toxic lead in “chat piles” all over the land…Flash forward to when “Blood Sisters” begins, in 2008, a tipping point for town, when people were being bought out of their homes and relocating to get away from all the toxic land, air and water. But it was a contentious time, ripping the town apart and often dividing families.”
NATIONAL BOOK REVIEW
“A critically important and riveting story of sisterhood, love, kinship and the search for justice in a federal system that has long ignored the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People. Lillie illuminates Native women’s’ simultaneous erasure and inhuman treatment with sensitivity, ingenuity and passion, powerfully elucidating all the ways that MMIWG2S are not missing by any fault of their own.” — Chelsea T. Hicks, author of A Calm & Normal Heart.
For more information, please call 620-238-5330 or email booksandburrrow@outlook.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.