Tiya Miles Wins National Book Award

In case you missed it or you are eager to experience the session again, watch National Book Award-winning author Tiya Miles in conversation with Kameelah Martin, Graduate School Dean and Professor of African American Studies at the College of Charleston, in their powerful and poignant virtual event which brought this year's Charleston Literary Festival to a resonant climax. Watch the session HERE.

All That She Carried, a remarkable book, both heartbreaking and uplifting, charts the journey of a rough cotton sack, containing a few simple items, which is given by Rose, an enslaved woman in South Carolina, to her nine year-old daughter Ashley before their enforced separation. Ashley's granddaughter Ruth inherits the sack and embroiders it with a few words which convey her family's story of loss and love. Tiya Miles uncovers the historical and emotional significance of the sack and its impact on three generations of black women.

Dr. Tiya Miles is professor of history and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Her previous books include The Dawn of Detroit, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.