Shore Lit and the Academy Art Museum are pleased to present a free book talk with acclaimed author Lauren Francis-Sharma, author of the new novel Casualties of Truth (Grove Atlantic, February 2025).
Casualties of Truth is the winner of the Independent Publishers IPPY Award for Literary Fiction in Silver and was named one of Electric Literature’s “48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025.”
Opening with the death of a white police officer in 1996 Johannesburg, the novel alternates between Prudence Wright’s past and her present. Prudence doesn’t like to think about the summer she spent in South Africa twenty years ago, observing the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings as a young law student. But when an acquaintance from Johannesburg tracks her down, she finds she doesn’t have a choice. Taut and literary, the novel is “a brutal history lesson in the guise of a thriller,” writes the New York Times Book Review.
This book talk is presented in conversation with the AAM exhibition Anita Groener: To the Edge of the World, in which Dutch-born, Ireland-based artist Anita Groener uses humble materials—twigs, cardboard, cut paper—to explore themes of loss, displacement, and resilience. Her intricately constructed sculptures and drawings reflect on the shared human impact of migration, conflict, and remembrance..
Francis-Sharma will be in conversation with Shore Lit Founder-Director Kerry Folan at the Academy Art Museum at 6:00 pm on Friday, October 3. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested. For questions about accessibility for this event, please email Kerry Folan [email protected].
Lauren Francis-Sharma is a child of Trinidadian immigrants and has written about the Caribbean in her critically acclaimed novels, ’Til the Well Runs Dry and Book of the Little Axe, which was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She holds a degree in English Literature with a minor in African-American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and an MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. A book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a MacDowell Fellow, she is also the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.
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