calsfoundation@cals.org
2020 Authors & Presenters
The Festival has been rescheduled for October 8-18, 2020.
Camille Acker
Saturday, April 25

Camille Acker grew up in Washington, DC, and holds a BA in English from Howard University and an MFA in creative writing. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Electric Literature, and other outlets. She lives in Philadelphia.
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Training School for Negro Girls | Fiction
Training School for Negro Girls, a debut short-story collection, unleashes the irony and tragi-comedy of respectability onto a wide-ranging cast of characters, all of whom call Washington, DC, home. A “woke” millennial tries to fight gentrification, only to learn she’s part of the problem; a grade school teacher dreams of a better DC, only to take out her frustrations on her students; and a young piano player wins a competition, only to learn the prize is worthless. Ultimately, they are confronted with the fact that respectability does not equal freedom. Instead, they must learn to trust their own conflicted judgment and fight to create their own sense of space and self.
Lyssa Kay Adams
Saturday, April 25

After a nearly 20-year career as a journalist, Lyssa Kay Adams traded true stories for fictional Happily Ever Afters. Her first traditionally published book, The Bromance Book Club (about a fictional book club of men who secretly read romance novels to learn how to be better partners), was named Amazon’s Best Romance of 2019 and hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “the most inventive, refreshing concept in rom-coms this year.” Adams lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter.
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Undercover Bromance | Fiction
Undercover Bromance finds Liv Papandreas blackballed from the restaurant scene, so she turns to Braden Mack, a charismatic nightclub entrepreneur, for help exposing her ex-boss. Mack calls in help from the Bromance Book Club. Inspired by the romantic suspense novel they’re reading, the book club assists Liv in setting up a sting operation to take down the ex-boss, but they’re just as eager to help Mack figure out a way to Liv’s heart, even though she’s determined to dampen the sparks between them before she gets burned.