fatima shaik and jennifer egan on "economy hall," the history of a free black brotherhood. happy about connection between friends of brooklyn heights library friends group and a robust group that supports the brooklyn heights library in so many ways. i was asked by deborah howell and if as a branch we would be interested in supporting fatima shaik and a book launch and i discovered the story behind the book and reading glowing review in the new york times, i jumped at the opportunity to share this monumental book but as the accolades and publicity grew so did the importance of this program and then brought jennifer egan on board, the author of manhattan beach, this has become an event that we knew. within economy hard, fatima shaik shares the free black brotherhood of new orleans founded in 1936 that supported its community through the civil war, reconstruction, terrorism and the birth of jazz. this narrative is american history that needs to be shared, highlights voices that need to be heard and is a deeply personal story for fatima shaik is a new orleans native and descen

there will be jennifer egan and michael connelly and so many other big name authors, and it's just a for people to be able to hear from their favorite writers and also to support a major cause in this country are your writer you were went to law school, so i know you're a writer. so you have the right your way through that right? a writer of novels. well i always wanted to be a writer like since i was a little girl. i remember i wrote this little poem and my dad read it when i was eight, and he was like this is the most brilliant poem ever. and it wasn't i look back on it retrospectively like i found it in his things a few years ago, and it's a very like aged, appropriately average poem. but he gave me so much praise about it, and he noticed something there. and so i started to develop the craft and even in high school, i wrote a book, but i started to get nervous around college just wanting to have some financial stability and i didn't have any models for people who are actually writing for a living, so i went to law school. and i worked at the firm and then during the legal recessi