Shannon Gibney, author and class of 1993 graduate of Community High School, will read from and discuss her new genre-bending book The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption.

Gibney grew up in Ann Arbor as the Black daughter of white adoptive parents and found out, at age nineteen, that her white birth mother had named her Erin Powers when she was born. Combining elements of memoir, fantasy, found documents, and critical commentary and research, the author tells the true story of Shannon Gibney layered with the fictional story of Erin Powers. At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience. The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.

This event includes a signing with books for sale.