Wednesday, June 4 at 5:30pm @ Off Square Books
Writer, editor and grantmaker Lauren Rhoades in conversation with author Mary Miller for Split the Baby, a debut memoir-in-pieces that is also a thoughtful story of learning to become whole again.
About the book
In honest and captivating prose, Split the Baby chronicles the toll of divorce and family rupture from the perspective of a child who was nearly torn in two. Lauren Rhoades retells her experience of growing up caught between two homes run by equally strong women: a fervently Catholic stepmother and a deeply sensitive Jewish mother. Pulled toward radically distinct family cultures with rich but conflicting religious traditions, the young girl struggles to reconcile her stepmother’s possessive charm with her mother’s fierce and vulnerable love.
Working with a trove of salvaged documents—including psychological evaluations, legal records, and personal family diaries—Rhoades searches for answers to questions of identity, spirituality, and the relationships that
most deeply shape us. Ultimately, this debut memoir-in-pieces is a thoughtful story of learning to become whole again.
About the author
Lauren Rhoades is a writer, editor, and grantmaker living in Jackson, Mississippi. Originally from Denver, Colorado, Lauren has served with AmeriCorps, started Mississippi’s first fermentation company, and helmed the Eudora Welty House & Garden. She is now director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission and a host of MPB’s The Mississippi Arts Hour. In 2022, Lauren founded Rooted Magazine, an online publication dedicated to telling unfiltered stories about what it means to call Mississippi home. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Mississippi University for Women. Split the Baby is her first book.
About the conversation partner
Mary Miller is the author of two novels, Biloxi and The Last Days of California, as well as two short story
collections, Always Happy Hour and Big World. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, the Oxford
American, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Norton’s Seagull Book of Stories, and Pushcart Prize XLIV, among
others.
Split the Baby
By Lauren Rhoades
$17.95
Publisher: Belle Point Press
ISBN: 9781960215369
