Author Celia Jeffries (Fiction and Nonfiction, 2008) will be joined in conversation with Janet Pocorobba (Nonfiction, 2006), Associate Director of the Lesley MFA Program, to celebrate the launch of Jeffries’ new book, Blue Desert.

Blue Desert is the story of Alice George, a headstrong young British woman, and her life among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the outside world faced the catastrophe of World War I, the Tuareg continued to crisscross the Sahara as they always had. A matrilineal society in which the men are veiled and the women hold property—a world in which anything can happen—it was a world well suited to eighteen-year-old Alice, who discovers a life she could never live in corseted England.

Jeffries and Pocorobba will focus their discussion on the fine art of revision and read from their books.

Jeffries’ work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Puerto del Sol, as well as the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper. She has received grants from Turkey Land Cove Foundation, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, and La Muse. Jeffries holds an MA from Brandeis and worked in news and educational publishing before earning an MFA from Lesley University. She has worked with writers at all levels, from elementary school to university both here and abroad, and in many different communities, including incarcerated, literacy, and ESL programs. Her own writing has been nurtured in the community of writers in Western Massachusetts, where she is on the steering committee of Straw Dog Writers Guild, and where she offers workshops at Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop. 

Pocorobba’s book, The Fourth String: A Memoir of Sensei and Me, was published in 2019. Her essays and memoirs have appeared in publications including The Rumpus, River Teeth, Harvard Review, Nixes Mate, The Writer, and forthcoming in Writers’ Digest. She is also a book editor and coach and works with writers in all stages of the projects as The Book Whisperer.