SLCL Presents Critically-Acclaimed Novelist Rob Franklin, Author of “Great Black Hope”

St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Favorite Author Series and Left Bank Books present poet and novelist Rob Franklin for a discussion and signing of “Great Black Hope.” The event will take place on Friday, June 13 at 7:00 p.m. at the Clark Family Branch, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63131.

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from Left Bank Books.

The event is presented in partnership with the Kimbilio for Black Fiction, a  community of writers and scholars committed to developing, empowering and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora and their stories.

Hailed as one of 2025’s most-anticipated debuts, Rob Franklin’s “Great Black Hope” is a gripping, elegant novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.

A drug arrest on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. “Great Black Hope” is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.

Born and raised in Atlanta, ROB FRANKLIN is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts.  

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.