Trigger Warning with Jacinda Townsend and Shonda Buchanan

Join us for a conversation with literary fiction author Jacinda Townsend about her newest title, Trigger Warning. Jacinda will be in conversation with fellow author Shonda Buchanan.

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About the Book:

A new novel about the enduring trauma of police brutality by the award-winning author of Mother Country

She’d gotten no trigger warning. And her entire life, she wanted to scream now, had deserved a trigger warning.

Early in life, Ruth survived a series of devastating events: Her little brother died from a childhood illness, her mother died of grief, and then her father was shot by the police right in front of their home. In the years following her father’s murder, Ruth pushes her past underground. She changes her name and moves to Kentucky, marries a man named Myron, and together they raise a kid. It’s been two decades, and she is, by outside measures, living a good life—but why doesn’t it feel good? When her marriage comes to a sudden end, their house burns down in the middle of the night, and she learns that her estranged sister has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Ruth is jolted back into action. She flees again, this time back to her home state of California, with her nonbinary teenager in tow, perhaps ready at last to face her pain and retrieve her former self.

Searing, surprisingly witty, and deeply human, Trigger Warning is a novel about the durational aftermath of anti-Black police violence. Through the perspectives of Ruth and Myron, and those of their friends and their child, Townsend explores divorce and desire, the heartbreaking brevity of parenting, the push and pull of old friendships, and the possibility, after incredible trauma, of reconnecting to what makes us feel alive.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9781644453544

About the Author:

Jacinda Townsend is the author of Mother Country, winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and Saint Monkey, winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. She teaches at Brown University.

About the Conversation Partner:

Shonda Buchanan is the author of The Lost Songs of Nina Simone (May 2025) and the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.” Shonda has published in The Mississippi Review, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, Indian Country Today, Capital & Main, Westways Magazine, Sisters of AARP and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

Twice Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow and Oxfam Ambassador, Shonda is a USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow, a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Department of Cultural Affairs Master Artist Fellow. An Oxfam Ambassador and PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and Mentor, Shonda’s works-in-progress are America's Bloodflowers and Children of the Mixed Blood Trail. For more information, visit www.shondabuchanan.com