Producer's Note: This is an encore edition of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in October 2022.
An interview with debut novelist Toya Wolfe, author of Last Summer on State Street.
The book follows Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens in the summer of 1999, when the apartment building where she and her family live is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of she and her friends’ families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go.
Toya Wolfe’s writing has appeared in African Voices, Chicago Journal, Chicago Reader, among many other places. A recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston-Bessie Head Fiction Award, her debut novel, Last Summer on State Street was named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and more.