You’re invit­ed to a spe­cial evening with artist and emerg­ing author Emi­ly Bowen Cohen. Join The Neigh­bor­hood and Jew­ish Book Coun­cil for a con­ver­sa­tion and a pre­view of Emi­ly’s forth­com­ing graph­ic nov­el Two Tribes (Heart­drum, an imprint of Harp­er Collins, 2023).

About Two Tribes:

Feel­ing out of place both at home with her mom and new step­fa­ther and at her Jew­ish day school, Mia finds her­self think­ing more and more about her Native Amer­i­can father, who lives with his new fam­i­ly in Okla­homa. Her moth­er doesn’t want to talk about him, but Mia can’t help but won­der if she’s miss­ing a part of her­self with­out him in her life. Mia makes a plan to use the gifts from her bat mitz­vah to take a bus to Okla­homa — with­out telling her mom — to vis­it her dad, in hopes of find­ing the con­nec­tion to her Musco­gee side she knows is just as impor­tant as her Jew­ish side.

Emi­ly Bowen Cohen is a writer and visu­al artist. Cur­rent­ly Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s inau­gur­al Writer-in-Res­i­dence, and is part of The Peleh Fund Res­i­den­cy, a pro­gram of The Neigh­bor­hood that funds a 3 – 6 month res­i­den­cy for an artist and their fam­i­ly in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia and Brook­lyn. Her graph­ic nov­el, Two Tribes, will be pub­lished June 2023 by Heart­drum, a Native-focused imprint at Harper­Collins. Emily’s back­ground informs her pas­sion for cre­at­ing com­pli­cat­ed Indige­nous char­ac­ters. She is a mem­ber of the Musco­gee (Creek) Nation and grew up in rur­al Okla­homa. Her father was the Chief of Staff at their trib­al hos­pi­tal and her moth­er is a nice Jew­ish girl from New Jer­sey. After her father’s ear­ly death, she was sep­a­rat­ed from her Native fam­i­ly. A decade lat­er, she returned to Okla­homa for a bit­ter­sweet home­com­ing. She’s been writ­ing and draw­ing sto­ries about the weird­ness of being Indige­nous in Amer­i­ca ever since. Cohen is best known for her mem­oir-style comics includ­ing her book An Amer­i­can Indi­an Guide to the Day of Atone­ment, in addi­tion to sev­er­al oth­er pub­lished essays, such as My Sioux-kot and Vis­it­ing Nation­al Parks While Native.