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Wednesday, October 21
 

6:00pm PDT

Nafissa Thompson-Spires: The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation


Co-presented with Museum of the African Diaspora


From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, literary debut novel. We find ourselves in 1920s Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Race Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. On the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford is an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with only his women to mourn him, but a question remains: Who killed him, and why? Top suspects are his four “wives,” but as their stories burst to light, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes. In conversation with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Doors at 5:30pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On the Rooftop, was a 2022 Reese’s Book Club Pick. The Revisioners won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from ­­­­­­the University... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora 685 Mission St, San Francisco
 

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