Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the novel, Long Division  and a collection of essays,  How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, the UK edition released in 2016. Laymon has written essays, stories and reviews for numerous publications including Esquire, McSweeneys, New York Times, ESPN the Magazine, Colorlines, NPR, LitHub, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, PEN Journal, Fader, Oxford American, The Best American Series, Ebony, Travel and Leisure, Paris Review and Guernica. Of his newest book, Heavy: An American Memoir, Buzzfeed writes: “Laymon's memoir is a reckoning, pulling from his own experience growing up poor and black in Jackson, Mississippi, and tracking the most influential relationships, for better or worse, of his life: with his brilliant but struggling single mother, his loving grandma, his body and the ways he nurtures and punishes it, his education and creativity, and the white privilege that drives the world around him...with shrewd analysis, sharp wit, and great vulnerability Laymon forces the reader to fully consider the effects of the nation's inability to reconcile its pride and ambition with its shameful history."

This event is co-sponsored with the Free Library Center for Public Life and is free & open to the public. The reading will be held at The Free Library Kingsessing, (1200 south 51st St) with light refreshments to be served afterwards at the Kingsessing Recreation Center.