Loyalty is so excited to welcome Shannon Sanders and Amber Sparks to celebrate the paperback release of Company! This event will take place at Loyalty Petworth (843 Upshur Street NW, Washington, DC 20011). **This event is free to attend, but registration is required** Please RSVP below to let us know you are coming. You can purchase the book from Loyalty below or in-person during the event! Please email [email protected] with any questions.

ABOUT THE BOOK

COMPANY: A richly detailed, brilliantly woven debut collection about the lives and lore of one Black family

Shannon Sanders’s sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960’s to the 2000’s, from law students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories.

Each piece in Company includes a moment when a guest arrives at someone’s home. In “The Good, Good Men,” two brothers reunite to oust a “deadbeat” boyfriend from their mother’s house. In “The Everest Society,” the brothers’ sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before adopting a child. In “Birds of Paradise,” their aunt, newly promoted to university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost’s sister finds her solitary life disrupted when her late sister’s daughter comes calling.
These are stories about intimacy, societial and familial obligations, and the ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate, this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shannon Sanders lives and works near Washington, DC. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, and was a 2020 winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Amber Sparks is the author of an upcoming novel, Happy People Don’t Live Here, and four collections of short fiction, including And I Do Not Forgive You: Revenges and other Stories, which was long-listed for the Story Prize, and The Unfinished World. Her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, the Paris Review, Slate, Tin House, Granta, The Cut and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this event.