The Center for Fiction welcomes Sarah Cypher for a discussion of her lush and imaginative debut, The Skin and Its Girl, a magic realist family saga centered around a young Palestinian American woman piecing together her great Aunt’s secrets. The story begins in a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, where the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. Decades later, Betty returns to her Aunt Nuha’s gravestone faced with a difficult decision: should she stay in the only country she’s ever known or should she follow her heart for the woman she loves, perpetuating her family’s cycle of exile? Cypher is joined by Zaina Arafat, author of Lambda-award winning novel You Exist Too Much and a key figure in the renaissance for queer literature of the Middle Eastern diaspora. The two writers will discuss Cypher’s novel of magic, sexual identity, exile, lineage, and family.