La Sociedad para Las Artes is proud to host a public reading event for award-winning writer, Cynthia Sylvester, on Friday, November 10, 2023 at 7:30 PM. The event will be held in the CMI Theater (Room 171) in Milton Hall, and copies of Sylvester’s debut collection, The Half-White Album, will be available for sale. A reception will be held immediately following the event.
This is a free reading series in which off-campus visitors will read from their most recently published books, alongside third year MFA students who will be reading from their creative theses.
This powerful debut collection explores lives lived between worlds. Sylvester masterfully weaves together fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to give readers a poignant though fractured view of her characters’ lives, their loves, and their struggles. Told from the perspective of an urban Native, the work details a journey led by the nomadic band, the Covers. It is an experience meant to heal generational trauma and bring back into the light people who may otherwise be forgotten. At its heart, The Half-White Album is a healing ceremony of the author’s own creation, a process grounded in music that celebrates what it is to be human and imperfect and to love imperfectly.
“The Half-White Album is a stunning powerhouse of literary music! Sylvester writes with deep heart and compassion, introducing us to characters we can’t help but love, even as they fall. Her lush, gorgeous language is a song that heals not only the story but also the reader.” – Susan Power, author of Sacred Wilderness
About Cynthia J Sylvester:
Cynthia J. Sylvester is an enrolled member of the Diné, born into the Kiyaa’áanii Clan for the Bilagáana Clan. She is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her flash fiction and short stories have appeared in ABQ in Print, Leon Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, As Us Journal, and Bosque—The Magazine, among others. You can find her on her Twitter or Facebook.