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Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape

Award-winning writer Lauret Savoy weaves personal journeys and historical inquiry to examine how the still unfolding history of the United States – and ideas of 'race' – have marked the land, this society, and her.

From twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds, from 'Indian Territory' and the US-Mexico Border to the US capital, Trace delves into fragmented histories – natural, personal, cultural – to illuminate stories of place in America.

In this work, Savoy grapples with a searing national history to reveal the often unvoiced presence of the past; she will share human stories of migration, silence, and displacement as epic as the continent they survey.

Savoy is the winner of an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship; she has also held fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University. Savoy is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Trace won the 2016 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the 2017 ASLE Creative Writing Award, and it was a finalist for a PEN American award and the Phillis Wheatley Award, among other honors.

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