The Garden District Book Shop is thrilled to announce that author Jamila Minnicks' will be at the shop to celebrate the release of her debut novel Moonrise Over New Jessup. Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Moonrise Over New Jessup is an enchanting and thought-provoking debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves on Alabama soil. 

Jamila Minnicks will sit down with friend and fellow author, Maurice Carlos Ruffin to discuss Moonrise Over New Jessup and answer any questions. Following the discussion, she will be available to chat with guests and sign copies of her book . Books will be available for purchase onsite. This event is free and open to the public.

Based on the history of the many Black towns and settlements established across the country, Minnicks’ heartfelt and riveting work is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America.

 It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into all-Black New Jessup, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear. As they marry and raise children together, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.