Join this week's featured author, Joanna Pearson (winner of the 2021 Drue Heinz Literature Prize), in our virtual book club series, “Authors and Anecdotes”, as she discusses her book, Now You Know It All. 

Now You Know It All, set in small-town North Carolina, or featuring eager Southerners venturing afar, these stories capture the crucial moment of irrevocable change. A young waitress accepts an offer from a beguiling stranger; a troubled boy attempts to unleash the villain from an internet hoax on his party guests; a smitten student finds more than she bargained for in her favorite teacher’s attic; two adult sisters reconvene to uncover a family secret hidden in plain sight. With a sharp eye for rendering inner life, Joanna Pearson has a knack for creating both compassion and a looming sense of threat. Her stories peel back the layers of the narratives we tell ourselves in an attempt to understand the world, revealing that the ghosts haunting us are often the very shadows that we cast.

Click HERE to be directed to the University of Pittsburgh Press website to learn more about Now You Know It All and for purchasing options.  (While we encourage you to read the books ahead of time it is not a requirement to participate in the series.)

Join us as we not only discuss her book, but also dive into Pearson's personal literature collection, her favorite readings, and participate in a live Q&A!

About the author: Joanna Pearson is a lapsed poet who once wrote a young adult novel on a whim but nowadays mostly writes short fiction. Her first collection of stories, Every Human Love, was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Foreword Indies Awards, and the Janet Heidinger Prize for Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net, as well as other journals. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and an MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A native of western North Carolina, she now lives with her husband and two daughters near Chapel Hill, where she works as a psychiatrist.