Kia Corthron presents MOON AND THE MARS at Bank Square Books (Mystic, CT)

James Merrill Fellow Reading: Kia Corthron (Moon and the Mars)
Bank Square Books and The James Merrill House present an author talk and signing with fellow, Kia Corthron for her book, Moon and the Mars.

About the Book

In Moon and the Mars, set in the impoverished Five Points district of New York City in the years 1857-1863, we experience neighborhood life through the eyes of Theo from childhood to adolescence, an orphan living between the homes of her Black and Irish grandparents. Throughout her formative years, Theo witnesses everything from the creation of tap dance to P.T. Barnum's sensationalist museum to the draft riots that tear NYC asunder, amidst the daily maelstrom of Five Points work, hardship, and camaraderie. Meanwhile, white America's attitudes towards people of color and slavery are shifting—painfully, transformationally—as the nation divides and marches to war.

About the Author

Kia Corthron is a novelist and playwright. Her debut, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, won the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and was recently cited by the Auraist substack as the American Debut Novel of the Century. Her second novel, Moon and the Mars, published in 2021, was positively reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, The Irish Times (Dublin), and elsewhere. In 2024, two of her plays had world premieres: Tempestuous Elements at D.C.’s Arena Stage and Fish in New York City, a co-production of Keen Company and the Working Theater. Other plays, including Breath, Boom, A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, and Force Continuum, have been produced in New York by Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Play Company; regionally by Eclipse Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Center Stage, Hartford Stage, Children’s Theatre Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, New York Stage and Film; in London by the Royal Court Theatre and Donmar Warehouse; and elsewhere. Awards include the Windham Campbell Prize, Horton Foote Award, Flora Roberts Award, USArtists Jane Addams Fellowship, McKnight National Residency. Edgar and Writers Guild Outstanding Series awards for The Wire. She serves on the Dramatists Guild Council, is a New Dramatists alumnus, and is a member of the Authors Guild.