Every family has its secrets.
In her memoir Everywhere I Look, Ona Gritz reveals a family history tainted by murder, shame, and silenced grief. Now, decades following a life-altering event, she is sharing her story. She will also read from her forthcoming book, Take a Sad Song (October 1, 2024, West 44 Books), described as “a thoughtful must-read that explores grueling attempts to destroy girls’ spirits.” Prepare to be riveted and moved.
Ona will be joined on stage by storyteller Allison Cornyn. Together, they’ll explore familial relationships, abuse within our reform system, and the state of juvenile justice today. They’ll also screen a 13-minute film about the history of the NYS Training School for Girls, where Andra (Ona’s sister) was sent in her teens. The film also introduces the Incorrigibles project, a transmedia project that tells the stories of ‘incorrigible’ girls in the United States over the last 100 years.
Helen Freemont calls Everywhere I Look “profound and beautifully written.” Sue William Silverman says, “This story of sister-love is a truly stunning and emotionally authentic exploration of sorrow and grief.” Honors include the Readers’ Choice Gold Award for Best Adult Book, the Independent Author Award in New Nonfiction, the Independent Author Award in True Crime, and inclusion in Independent Book Review’s most recent list of Must-Read Books.
This event has been brought to HVBH by community member Donna Hannan who is lifelong friends with Ona. Light refreshments will be served.
Copies of Ona’s books - Everywhere I Look and Take A Sad Song - will be available for purchase and signing. Please RSVP for planning purposes.
About Ona
Ona Gritz’s new memoir, Everywhere I Look, won the Pencraft Best Book Award in Memoir, the Readers’ Choice Gold Award for Best Adult Book, and the Independent Author Award in both New Nonfiction and True Crime. Her poems and essays have appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, Ploughshares, Brevity, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays, a Best Life Story in Salon, and a winning entry in the Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 Project. She is the author of two 2024 young adult verse novels, The Space You Left Behind, which was featured in the Children’s Book Council’s Hot Off the Press roundup of anticipated best sellers, and Take a Sad Song, described as a “thoughtful must-read” in a starred Kirkus Review.
About Allison
Alison Cornyn is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator whose work often incorporates public memory and archives. For over 20 years, Cornyn has initiated new forms of storytelling in installations and online, investigating pressing social issues from multiple perspectives. Many of her projects address the US criminal legal system and mass incarceration.
Her current project, Incorrigibles, examines youth justice for girls – past and present, starting in New York. Incorrigibles investigates the long-term use of stigmatizing language to define and confine young women and tells the stories of women who were incarcerated in their youth to create an archive of first-person testimonies that counter and broaden institutional histories.
Cornyn received a Creative Capital award for her pioneering interactive documentary about US prisons. Her work has received numerous awards, including a Peabody, the Gracie Allen for Women in Media, and Pew’s Batten Award for Innovation. She serves on the Board of the NYC Archives and teaches at the School for Visual Arts in NYC.
About Everywhere I Look
In 1982, twenty-five-year-old Angie Boggs, pregnant with her second child, was brutally murdered, along with her husband and infant son. Ill equipped for the horror of that violence and the enormity of her loss, Angie's sister Ona, a college sophomore, felt numb. She also felt deeply ashamed of her inability to grieve.
But shame, like her sister's absence, was something Ona knew well. For as long as she could remember, she'd felt ashamed of being their parents' blatantly favored child. The disabled daughter they'd coddled and protected while they alternately punished and neglected Angie, and finally sent her away.
It wasn't until thirty years after the murders, both their parents gone and Ona nearly twice the age Angie was allowed to reach, that she developed the courage and a detective's compulsion to learn all she could about her sister's turbulent life and unthinkable death. The result is Everywhere I Look, a beautifully rendered memoir of sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. A profoundly moving reckoning and love letter.
About Take a Sad Song
It's the summer of 1970, and 15-year-old Jane is still reeling from the violent death of her father. She starts partying to deal with her grief, but a frantic call from her mother leads to her arrest. Jane awaits her hearing with hope, but instead she is sentenced to a yearlong stay at the New York State Training School for Girls. She faces bullying and solitary confinement, and all seems lost. Then she's introduced to the Racket, an underground world of gender role-play, romantic relationships, and chosen families the inmates have created. She befriends and develops deep feelings for fellow inmate Jo-Jo, who shares her love of music. Jane comes to appreciate the complex lives of people she never would have gotten to know on the outside--but she knows that her new family can be taken away in an instant.