Join us in exploring the writer’s craft with Lauren Francis-Sharma, the 2026 Artist-in-Residence in the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience. She is an award-winning and acclaimed author and the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference.
A book sale and signing will follow.
Light refreshments will be served.
Lauren Francis-Sharma, a Pushcart nominated writer, is the author of three novels. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, 'Til the Well Runs Dry, was chosen as an “O, The Oprah Magazine” 2014 Summer Reading Pick and was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her second novel, Book of the Little Axe, was selected as the 2020 American Library Association’s “Libraries Transform Book Pick,” and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. Her third novel, Casualties of Truth, a Dublin Award nominee and finalist for the 2025 Caricon Prize, has been named a 2025 “Book to Read” by NPR, and was inspired by her time at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings. Lauren has written the new introduction to the latest edition of the classic South African novel, Cry, the Beloved Country and is also the co-editor of the 2026 anthology, Welcome to the Mountain: A Portable Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, which is a result of her current position as the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College. Lauren, a MacDowell Fellow, serves as the Awards Chair for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Law School, and The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her fourth novel will be published by Henry Holt in July 2027. Lauren is the mother of two young women who are off at college, and she lives in Maryland with her husband and their dog.