March 4 | Busboys and Poets presents Safia Elhillo with Elizabeth Acevedo, Clint Smith, and Alsarah
Free and open to all! RSVP to get the Zoom Link!
Join Busboys and Poets for the virtual celebration of author and poet SAFIA ELHILLO’s debut YA novel, HOME IS NOT A COUNTRY. (Make Me A World; on sale March 2, 2021; Ages 12+)
Marjan Naderi, the 2020 D.C. Youth Poet Laureate, will open up the event with a reading followed by a reading from Safia Elhillo from HOME IS NOT A COUNTRY. SPECIAL GUESTS Elizabeth Acevedo and Clint Smith will join Safia for a lively in-conversation after the reading. A musical offering from Alsarah will close out the evening.
About HOME IS NOT A COUNTRY: Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn't give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry.And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else's. . .she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.