Five debut authors discuss hope and self-preservation at Brooklyn Book Festival
Brooklyn BookBeat
In Katherena Vermette’s debut novel “The Break,” a small indigenous community is forced to grapple with change and community identity after the shock of a violent assault. The story is told from ten different perspectives, each character recounting their versions of what led up to the night in question. “I wanted to show how we take care of each other,” Vermette, who is part of the indigenous Métis community in Winnipeg, told an audience outside Borough Hall.
The dual theme of tenacity and caretaking carried through the “Who? New!” panel, where Uli Beutter Cohen of Subway Book Review spoke with Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Tadzio Koelb, Jaap Robben, Moriel Rothman-Zecher and Katherena Vermette about their debut novels.
Robben, who has written several children’s books, makes his first foray into the world of adult fiction with “You Have Me to Love,” a story about a son helping his mother search for a father he already knows to be dead.