Into the wild

Our book is leaving our clutches and heading - we hope - into yours.

After a six-and-a-half-year gestation period, Dead Man Walking: Graphic Edition is about to be birthed into the world.

Before publication day on Tuesday October 28 you can tune in to Susan Larson’s bibliophile podcast, The Reading Life, to catch Sister Helen Prejean, Catherine Anyango Grünewald, and me in our first interview together.

We had a wonderful time talking with Susan, who has hosted The Reading Life for the past 10 years, after a two-decades-long stint as books editor for The Times-Picayune.

The Reading Life is broadcast on WWNO (NPR) or you can listen online by going to the podcast’s website.

The show will air on Friday 24th October at 12:30pm (CDT) with a repeat on Sunday 26th October at noon (CDT).

Come to the launch!

We’re having not one but two major launch events, the first in New York on Thursday, November 6th; the second in New Orleans, on Thursday November 13th. Both are open to the public, which means that you are invited.

At the New York event there’ll be free books for all attendees (while supplies last) and Catherine, Sr. Helen, and I will be on hand to sign them afterwards. The event is free to attend, but please make sure to register using this link or using the QR code in the image below.

At the New Orleans events, there’ll be free books for students and teachers (while supplies last), and books on sale for everybody else. We’ll be signing books both before and after this event.

The event is free and there’s no need to register because the church where it’s being held is huge.

There’ll be additional, smaller events and interviews during the first two weeks of November. I’ll publish info about these in a future newsletter or you can keep track of all the upcoming events on the Book Tour page on Sister Helen’s website.

Why the book is important

This past week there were four executions in the US. That’s an astonishing number given the slow demise of the death penalty throughout most of the country this century.

What’s not surprising is that of the 37 executions so far this year, all but three of them took place in former slave states.

When public opinion leans ever more towards doing away with the death penalty, when juries are reluctant to hand out new death sentences, and when most jurisdictions no longer use the penalty even if it remains on their books, a trio of voices remain wedded to it: the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the Trump administration, and the South.

Just as Sister Helen’s original eyewitness account forced the American public into a reckoning with a penalty that they would have preferred remained hidden, we hope this graphic incarnation of her story will galvanize a new generation of readers, readers who are, each and every day, being exposed to a government that devalues human dignity.

Please share the news about Dead Man Walking: Graphic Edition.

• Ask your library to put it on their shelves.

• Take a walk to your local bookstore on publication day (October 28) and buy a copy. (In New Orleans, Sr. Helen, Catherine and I will be doing a talk and signing at Octavia Books on Tuesday November 11th.)

• Order one online.

• Buy 25 copies or more from Porchlight Books and get a 38% discount! Great for a class or church group.