Britt Bennett’s novel, The Vanishing Half, introduces the identical Vignes twins, who, as teenagers, run away from their home in the Deep South. Bennet explores the consequences of both the past and race on their separate lives in different worlds, one Black and one White.
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writer’s Program. Her debut novel The Mothers was a New York Times bestseller, and her second novel The Vanishing Half was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and, in 2021, she was chosen as one of Time’s Next 100 Influential People. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.