Tuesday Sep 08, 2026
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
About the Book.
For fans of Master Slave Husband Wife and Django Unchained comes the extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as “the first shots of the Civil War,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels.
The year, 1851. The place, a Quaker farming community turned Underground Railroad stronghold, where a Maryland enslaver had journeyed in pursuit of four men who’d fled his plantation years before. In a few hours, he’d be dead…and twenty-seven men from the village of Christiana would be rounded up and put on trial. Not for his murder, but for treason—for waging war against the United States, at a time when it was a crime against the government to obstruct an enslaver looking to reclaim his “property.”
This is story of what happened in Christiana that September morning—and in the ensuing “trial of the century,” which saw the president himself advise the prosecution on strategy and a sitting congressman serve as lead attorney for the defense. But The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker is also a much larger tale, one spanning decades, following a whole startlingly diverse community of abolitionists in their fight to convince their fellow Americans of the subversive idea that now found itself on trial: that the nation ought to live up the ideals it was founded on, and respect all men as equals.
It’s a story that whisks readers from the quiet farmlands of Lancaster County—where a self-emancipated man named William Parker, whom legend had it bullets could not kill, rallied his neighbors to ride out each night to battle the slavecatchers who stalked their countryside—to Philadelphia’s genteel Society Hill, where socialite Harriet Forten Purvis had the ear of the mayor (and a cellar filled with fugitives). It’s stylish, propulsive, intimately human tale of bravery, ingenuity, and hope—and of ordinary people with little in common who came together to stand against injustice…and won.
About the Author.
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels, as well as eight collections of poetry. A seventh generation Pennsylvanian, she lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Ernest Cline, and their children.
About the Moderator
Amber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actress, director, and writer. She is the author of seven critically acclaimed books across genres including the anthology Listening in the Dark: Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition and the novel Any Man. Tamblyn co-wrote and directed the film Paint It Black, starring Alia Shawkat and Janet McTeer, which she adapted from Janet Fitch’s cult classic novel of the same name. She writes for the New York Times, The Cut, and The New Yorker. Her most recent writing can be found at AmberTamblyn.Substack.com.
About the Readers:
Sarah Kay is a New Yorker. a poetry writer and reader. an educator. the founder and co-director of Project VOICE. a podcast enthusiast. a postcard lover. the author of five books of poetry including B, No Matter the Wreckage, The Type, All Our Wild Wonder, and A Little Daylight Left.
Jon Sands is a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected for his second poetry collection, It’s Not Magic (Beacon Press, 2019). He is the founder of the Emotional Historians workshop, a series of generative writing classes with well over 1500 registrants to date.
Actor, poet, singer-songwriter, playwright, musician, freestyle emcee, and producer. Shawn Randall made his off-Broadway playwriting debut at The Cherry Lane Theater as part of their 2020 Mentor Project, mentored by the late Diana Oh.