RECORDED 2/29/16: My talk with Kaitlyn Greenidge about her excellent debut novel, We Love You Charlie Freeman is really fascinating. We talk about the genesis of the book, the elasticity of the black experience, and the need to use humor in our stories about race and racial and cultural connection and difference. Her book is getting rave reviews and rightly so. Listen in here or download the episode from itunes.-Heidi Durrow
Kaitlyn Greenidge received her MFA from Hunter College, where she studied with Nathan Englander and Peter Carey, and was Colson Whitehead’s writing assistant as part of the Hertog Research Fellowship. Greenidge was the recipient of the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize. She was a Bread Loaf scholar, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace artist-in-residence, and a Johnson State College visiting emerging writer. Her work has appeared in the Believer, the Feminist Wire, At Length, Fortnight Journal, Green Mountains Review, Afrobeat Journal, the Tottenville Review, and American Short Fiction. Originally from Boston, she now lives in Brooklyn.
“Kaitlyn Greenidge’s masterful debut novel We Love You, Charlie Freeman is at heart an examination of race and language — an African-American family is hired by a New England research institute to raise and teach sign language to a chimpanzee, but the institute has a shockingly dark past. We Love You, Charlie Freeman skillfully tackles history and heavy subjects with both humor and thoughtfulness; this book proves Greenidge will be a literary force to be reckoned with.” —Buzzfeed.com
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