Conversation and Homecoming

Baltimore-born and raised (and now based), New York Times bestselling author Carole Boston Weatherford has been hailed by HuffPost as a “master of picture book nonfiction.” She writes the kind of books she wishes she’d had to read as a child—ones where people of color are authentically represented.

For her third collaboration with her illustrator son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, the just released KIN follows their enslaved ancestors from slavery in colonial Maryland to Civil War battlefields to the founding of all-Black, Reconstruction-era villages in Talbot County. On their quest to trace family lineage and reclaim ancestral narratives, mother and son discovered local lore that they descend from African royalty.

They have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal. The mother-son duo hope that KIN will inspire others to research their genealogy and to collect their families’ stories.

This FREE event is presented by The Country School, the Avalon Foundation, the Talbot County Free Library, and the Heart of Chesapeake Country Heritage Area, in partnership with the Talbot Historical Society, ShoreRivers, Maryland Public Television, Dock Street Foundation, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Monica Davis, Easton Economic Development Corporation, Talbot County Public Schools, Talbot Arts, Talbot County Economic Development and Tourism, Dorchester County Tourism, the Academy Art Museum, the Frederick Douglass Honor Society, and WHCP FM 91.7 – Music Discovery & NPR for the Mid-Shore.