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Brit Bennett hadn’t planned to release her book in the midst of a racial and socio-political reckoning, but the year’s most successful and poignant tale of sisterhood landed when we needed it most. Her book, The Vanishing Half, is a fictional tale of twin girls, each growing into her own woman, both products of a complicated community at odds with its beauty. The colorism they are exposed to from birth propels them down divergent paths. The consequences of their respective choices ripple through those closest to them. The triumphs and struggles of 2020 only highlight the brilliance of Bennett’s work and have made The Vanishing Half required reading for any critical mind.

“You write for those moments when you surprise yourself,” says Bennett. We are discussing her next book, and all she’ll share on that topic is that the focus will be music. My interest is piqued over that small detail, with the knowledge of what she was able to churn out in her first two novels. The Vanishing Half is her most recent (and soon to be adapted by HBO), and her debut, The Mothers, came out in 2016 to critical acclaim. Covering the fictional lives of complex women in complicated realities, Bennett says: “I am interested in these fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, though my relationship with my mother is very close. It is a dynamic that interests me, because these relationships shape you dramatically, because they show you what type of woman you want or don't want to be.” …