Lauren Rhoades is a writer and editor living in Jackson, Mississippi. Originally from Colorado, Rhoades has served with AmeriCorps, started Mississippi's first fermentation company, and helmed the Eudora Welty House & Garden. She is now director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission and a host of Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s The Mississippi Arts Hour. In 2022, Rhoades founded Rooted Magazine, a bestselling Substack publication dedicated to telling unfiltered stories about what it means to call Mississippi home. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Mississippi University for Women.

Schedule

10:00 am to 11:00 am
Bienville Building, Conference Center 118
The Past Isn’t Dead: Memoirs at the Crossroads of Violence and Voice
Jordan LaHaye Fontenot, Home of the Happy: A Murder on the Cajun Prairie
Bernice L. McFadden, Firstborn Girls: A Memoir
Lauren Rhoades, Split the Baby: A Memoir in Pieces
with moderator Teresa Tumminello Brader

11:15 am to Noon
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

Split the Baby: A Memoir in Pieces

In honest and captivating prose, Split the Baby chronicles the toll of divorce and family rupture from the perspective of a child who was nearly torn in two. Lauren Rhoades retells her experience of growing up caught between two conflicting homes run by equally strong women: a fervently Catholic stepmother and a deeply sensitive Jewish mother. Pulled toward radically distinct family cultures steeped in rich religious traditions, the young girl struggles to reconcile her stepmother's possessive charm with her mother's fierce and vulnerable love. Working with a trove of salvaged documents— including psychological evaluations, legal records, and personal family diaries— Rhoades searches for answers to questions of identity, spirituality, and the relationships that most deeply shape us. Ultimately, this debut memoir-in-pieces is a thoughtful story of learning to become whole again.