Author Talk with NIkesha Elise Williams

Join award-winning author Nikesha Elise Williams as she discusses her newest novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree, which explores the ripple effects of actions, secrets, and love through seven generations of Black women.

It's 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati desperately wants to know the identity of her father. Gossip flies fast and loose in her mother Nadia's basement salon, but when it comes to family, she's tight-lipped. Tati's grandmother, Gladys, won't tell her either; nor will Gladys tell Nadia the real reason she fled Land’s End, Alabama, in 1953. These are the first of many secrets in the matrilineal line of Dupree women. There's Jubi in 1917 who failed to pass for white when she had a dark baby, Ruby. Ruby's lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own out of wedlock. And the night in 1980 that Nadia won’t speak of. Dupree women only have daughters, a malediction passed down because of the suffering by the first of their line. None of the women know their ancestor’s enslaved or given name, only the legend of how she died: They cut off her head because she ran. Readers will journey with Tati to uncover the identity of her father, while learning the truth of her lineage, still whispered at kitchen tables and murmured in basements, where the ritual of pressing hair happens every Saturday night.

Books will be available for sale and signing from The Book Cellar.

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Nikesha Elise Williams is a two-time Emmy Award–winning producer, an award-winning author, and producer and host of the Black and Published podcast. A narrative strategist by day and journalist always, her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Essence, and Vox. Nikesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and a DeGroot Foundation Writer of Note grantee. A Chicago native, she lives in Florida with her family.

Moderator Denisha Augustin is 1/4 of The Reading Black Girls, an online platform committed to amplifying and promoting books written by BIPOC authors. Since 2021, TRBG has interviewed authors, covered book fests, collaborated on campaigns with trade publishers, and were featured on Essence’s online platform. In her spare time, you can find Nish drinking matcha, packing her Kindle for a flight, yapping away on Book Threads, or curled up with her newest thriller obsession.