Ten Evenings with Brit Bennett, Presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures

Brit Bennett is the author of the critically acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller The Vanishing Half, a riveting, expansive, and emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing—provocative, compassionate, and wise.

Twin sisters, inseparable as children, ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, The Vanishing Half looks well beyond issues of race, considering the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, exploring the multiple reasons people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. She is a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree. Her essays are featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. Her debut novel, The Mothers was a critically acclaimed #1 New York Times-bestseller.