Jori Lewis is an award–winning journalist who writes about agriculture and the environment. Her reports have appeared on PRI’s The World and in Discover Magazine, Pacific Standard, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She is also a contributing editor of Adi, a literary magazine about global politics. In 2018, she received the prestigious Whiting Grant for Creative Nonfiction. Lewis splits her time between Illinois and Senegal, and Slaves for Peanuts is her first book.
Two Lines Press
Hidden Histories: Dorothee Elmiger and Jori Lewis
May 6, 2023|4:00pm
4:00 pm Pacific
Bay Area Book Festival | Brower Center | Tamalpais Room | Berkeley, California
This event has already taken place.
After attending this session, you’ll never again view your lunchtime PB&J or that spoonful of sugar in your morning coffee in quite the same way. In Slaves for Peanuts, journalist Jori Lewis, who received a Whiting Award for her work, traces both natural and human history as she reveals the long and tortured story of the crop’s entanglement with human bondage in west Africa. Deeply informed by original research and featuring richly detailed historical characters, Lewis’s book is an important new contribution to the history of global slavery. Swiss author Dorothee Elmiger’s Out of the Sugar Factory, a finalist for the German Book Prize, is a work of fiction that’s been described as “hallucinatory” but is also thoroughly grounded in historical research. Elmiger’s protagonist (also named Dorothee Elmiger) is an archivist, an obsessive collector of objects related to the violent history of the global sugar trade, which unfolds through a kaleidoscopic narrative that’s as intellectually engaged as it is self-reflexive. This revelatory session will be moderated by Ariana Proehl, KQED culture reporter.
This event is presented with the support of the Swiss Arts Council ProHelvetia.
Author
Dorothee Elmiger
Dorothee Elmiger was born in 1985 in Switzerland. She is the author of Out of the Sugar Factory, Shift Sleepers and Invitation to the Bold of Heart. She lives in New York City.
Author
Ariana Proehl
Ariana Proehl is a writer, producer and host with a passion for exploring and understanding why we do the things we do. She is currently a culture reporter for KQED, telling unique stories about Bay Area life, arts and culture. Proehl also created and launched KQED’s annual Youth Takeover, a week that showcases stories produced by local high school students. In past lives, she’s been the executive director of a youth development nonprofit, served as co-director of a film festival and created the online media brand, Know This!, with a mission to educate, entertain, and empower.