AViD Presents: Ibi Zoboi

Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and holds an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, a New York Times bestseller, and Punching the Air with co-author and Exonerated Five member, Yusef Salaam. She is the editor of the anthology Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America. Raised in New York City, she now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children.

Her 2018 novel, Pride, is a modern, timely retelling of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice. Set in Bushwick, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, the book explores the life of Afro-Latino girl Zuri Benitez. As her neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, her life is turned upside down when the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street. The novel balances cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the magic of first love.

The event will be moderated by Jenny Goulden, a librarian at North Side Library. As a teen, Jenny took yearly pilgrimages to the JamboREAD author event in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she met authors like John Green and Jacqueline Woodson and one time rode in a car with Lois Lowry but was too nervous to say anything. She eventually went to library school so she could host events of her own. After 9 years as a youth librarian around the metro, she is now the Info Services Librarian at the North Side Library. She works on the Book Chat and Adult Programming teams and attends the YA for Adults Book Club in her off hours. 

The 2021 season of AViD is sponsored by the Des Moines Public Library Foundation with support from these generous donors: Nationwide Foundation, Union Pacific Foundation, Kelly and Brad Edmister, Principal, Humanities Iowa and the National Endownment for the Humanities, Mary K. and Daniel M. Kelly Family Foundation, Karen Shaff and Steven Jayne, Pamela Bass-Bookey and Harry Bookey, Cultivating Compassion: The Dr. Richard Deming Foundation, Dr. Katherine and Andrew Hauser, Douglas and Deborah West, Cynthia O’Brien and Michael Fitzpatrick, Mary M. Riche, Shelley and Martin Brody, Dawn Taylor, Judy Blank, Jann Freed and John Fisher, Barbara and Jon Yankey, and The Des Moines Register (in-kind) and Iowa Public Radio (in-kind).