Friday, April 2, 2021, St. Andrew's will host a Q&A with novelist Yaa Gyasi. Gyasi has written two novels, Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom. Her debut novel, Homegoing, was the all-school read last year and has won many awards including the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book (at the age of 26), PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction and the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35.
Yaa was born in Mampong, Ghana, raised in Huntsville, Alabama, attended Stanford University and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her book Homegoing opens up in 1700s Ghana and explores the legacy of slavery while her latest novel, Transcendent Kingdom draws on her life as a family of immigrants from Ghana. As Gyasi has said her latest novel was deeply personal. As stated in an interview with NPR's Terry Gross, "I was writing about the places that I knew best, particularly Huntsville, Alabama, the place that I grew up in, and I was also writing about religion, which was a big part of my life and my childhood... It was an opportunity, I think, for me to revisit that time in my life."
We are so excited and honored to have Yaa Gyasi share some time with us!