The Center for Literary Arts Book Club, free and open to the public, gives San Joseans the chance to discuss the latest books by the authors they've seen and heard from on-stage as part of the Reading Series. In order to make the CLA Book Club more accessible during these changing times, we have moved our discussion to the online platforms of GoodReads and Zoom.

Join us for our discussion of the best-selling novel Red at the Bone by award-winning author, Jacqueline Woodson. This meeting takes place on Sunday, October 16, 2022 on Zoom from 4-5 PM.

In Red at the Bone an unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes and explores their histories--reaching back to the Tulsa race massacre of 1921--and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from each other, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson’s taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child.

Jacqueline Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award, and a Sibert Honor. She wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Coretta Scott King Award winner Before the Ever After; New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me; The Other Side, Each Kindness, Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Make it official! Join CLA Book Club on GoodReads where members share thoughts, ask questions, and  celebrate our favorite new books. This month, one lucky member will receive their very own signed copy of Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson.