Miami Book Fair: Robert Jones Jr. In Conversation with William Johnson

Miami Book Fair 2022 presents Robert Jones Jr. on The Prophets: A Novel, in conversation with PEN Across America’s William Johnson. The novel tells the story of Isaiah, who was Samuel’s, and Samuel, who was Isaiah’s. That is how it was from the beginning and how it was to be until the end. In the barn, they tended to the animals and each other, transforming the shed into a human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man–a fellow slave– seeks to gain fervor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own, and Isaiah and Samuel’s love is called out as sinful and dangerous to the plantation’s harmony. As tensions build and the weight of centuries culminates in climactic reckoning, The Prophets reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance. But, it is also a story shot through with hope, beauty, truth, and the power of love. This program will be available on-demand at MiamiBookFairOnline.com.

Robert Jones Jr. is the author of The New York Times bestseller The Prophets: A Novel, which won the 2022 Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for debut fiction and the 2022 NAIBA Book of the Year Award for fiction. It is also a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for fiction and one of the best books of 2021 by a variety of publications. William Johnson is the PEN Across America program director at PEN America. He was the editor and publisher of the literary magazine Mary Literary and co-produced Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, the first major anthology for queer poets of color in the United States.

This event is funded in part through a Florida Humanities Book Festival Grant in partnership with the Miami Dade College Foundation.