×
Your location has been changed to Providence area.
This Event has Passed
The Gordon School to Host Hazel Kight Witham, author of “The Truth About Secrets,” for Free Reading
The Gordon School will host Hazel Kight Witham, author of The Truth About Secrets, a memoir-in-verse, for a special reading and conversation with Frances Martindale, Director of the Joukowsky Family Library. This event, which is free and open to the public, will celebrate LGBTQIA+ community, rainbow families, our middle school selves, and how secrets and shame can transform into allyship and liberation.
As Martindale explains, "Hazel's book offers a way for middle schoolers and their caregivers to start a conversation, and books that can do that are vital. Gordon is a place that celebrates the middle school years, so I'm also thrilled that our seventh grade humanities teacher, Tamar Paull, will be joining the conversation to help the audience connect with, and affirm, their own middle school selves."
The reading is part of a long Gordon tradition of hosting authors and showcasing their work to the public. Recent guests in the Joukowsky Family Library have included authors Kwame Alexander, Kyle Lukoff, Karina Yan Glaser and Jerry Craft, and publishing pioneers Cheryl and Wade Hudson.
When:
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. (approximate end time)
Where:
The Gordon School
45 Maxfield Avenue
East Providence, RI 02914
Who:
Hazel Kight Witham, author of The Truth About Secrets, a memoir-in-verse; Frances Martindale, Director of Joukowsky Family Library; Tamar Paull, Gordon School’s seventh grade humanities teacher; the Gordon School community; members of the public.
About The Truth About Secrets:
It is 1987, and Hazel is in sixth grade. Three things consume her: how to be pretty when she’s not allowed makeup, how to be cool when she’s just not, and how to get her crush to ask her out. Oh, and one more thing: keeping her two moms firmly in the closet.
As her close-held secret becomes kindling for middle school wildfire, Hazel is forced to confront not only the judgment of others, but her own feelings of shame. She never guessed how secrets and shame can transform into a strange kind of liberation.
About Hazel Kight Witham:
Hazel Kight Witham is a mother, educator, writer, and champion slam poetry coach who holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles. As a proud public school teacher in Los Angeles Unified, she loves listening to young people and challenging them to think more critically and creatively about their place in the world they wish to live. Hazel is a member of Women Who Submit, a collective dedicated to empowering women and nonbinary writers to submit work for publication. Her work has been published in The Sun, Bellevue Literary Review, Made in L.A. Vols. 4 & 5, Mutha Magazine, Integrated Schools, and she was poetry editor for Transformation, a Women Who Submit anthology. Her memoir-in-verse, The Truth About Secrets from StrikeThrough Press, joined the world in June, 2024.
About Gordon School:
The Gordon School, in East Providence, Rhode Island, was founded in 1910 as the state’s only non-public coeducational school. Since then, the school has evolved into a progressive institution that offers students academic experiences that have applications far beyond the classroom. With a practical hands-on, real-world instructional approach, each student comes to truly appreciate the value of multiple perspectives. Learning takes place among a diverse population of students and teachers who reflect the many cultures within Rhode Island’s community. Educating children from nursery school through eighth grade, Gordon’s goal is to graduate intellectual leaders and joyful learners who understand empathy, and young people who will make a positive impact on the world. Gordon has replaced the traditional independent school financial aid system with Family Individualized Tuition, a simpler, more predictable system that Gordon created to better reflect the school's inclusive, innovative mission. For more information, please visit www.gordonschool.org.
###
