Events

Join us for a very special conversation between memoirists Deborah Jiang Stein (Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus: Inside the World of a Woman Born in Prison) and Jessica Handler (Invisible Sisters) in which they discuss the redemptive value of telling hard stories and why sometimes it's okay to declare some truths off limits. Deborah Jiang Stein, author of Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus: Inside the World of a Woman Born in Prison, is a writer, public speaker, and founder of The unPrison Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that advocates for and teaches new life skills, literacy, education, self-reflection, and peer mentoring with women and girls in prison. Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus: Inside the World of a Woman Born in Prison is the story of a woman whose gift for finding purpose in life drives her to help others change their lives even as she struggles to accept and overcome her own past, born heroin addicted to a mother in prison. Her story proves redemption is possible from even the darkest of corners. Invisible Sisters is Jessica Handler’s powerful tale of coming of age as the daughter of progressive Jewish parents who moved to Atlanta to participate in the social-justice movement of the 1960s, the healthy sister living in the shadow of her siblings’ illnesses, a daughter in a family torn apart by impossible circumstances, and as a young woman struggling to redefine herself after her sisters’ deaths. Handler’s baby sister had been born with Kostmann’s Syndrome—a congenital blood disorder so rare that it appears in one in every two million births—and she and her family grew accustomed to the constantly shifting demands of illness. But when her younger sister was diagnosed with leukemia at age six, Jessica’s world, and her family, began to unravel. By the age of nine, Jessica Handler had begun to introduce herself as the “well sibling” and to consider the very real possibility that one day, she would be the only one left. Invisible Sisters is a memoir of the unforgettable journey that she and her family faced.