And the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize winner is... Cassandra Lane!
Photo: Wreiko Dawson
About Cassandra Lane:
Cassandra Lane has worked as a newspaper reporter, a high school English and journalism teacher, a college access advocate for underrepresented students in Los Angeles, a senior writer for an early education nonprofit, and a community relations manager for the LA Dodgers. She is currently managing editor of LA Parent magazine. Her essays and stories have appeared in a variety of outlets, including Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Trump Era, Writers Resist, Everything But the Burden, the Source, Entropy, Expressing Motherhood’s live storytelling show, and the New York Times’ animated video series “Conception.” She received an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. A Louisiana native, she calls LA, where she now lives with her husband and son, her second home.
About We Are Bridges:
“A groundbreaking, lyrical patchwork of historical research, imagined pasts and futures, and personal narrative. Many will feel this book in their cells and bones.”
—KAELYN RICH, executive director, Bitch Media
“Lane boldly investigates the connections between transgenerational trauma, personal love, and the burden of memory. Her heartfelt memoir will stay with you.”
—YZ CHIN, author of Though I Get Home
The Feminist Press, TAYO Literary Magazine, and distinguished judges Jennifer Baker, Regina Brooks, YZ Chin, Bridgett M. Davis, Juli Delgado Lopera, Brontez Purnell, KaeLyn Rich, Melissa R. Sipin, and Jamia Wilson are honored to award the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize to Cassandra Lane for her book, We Are Bridges. Lane’s memoir weaves the story of her great-grandfather’s lynching with her experience of becoming a mother, attempting to unearth the lives of her ancestors and provide her child with a family record. The book will be published by the Feminist Press in the summer of 2021.