A Little Piece of Sky, Paperback

Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award

Debut Fiction

A poignant, powerful debut that combines the deep emotion of The House on Mango Street with uniquely creative storytelling, painting a story of survival and healing.

Unfolding in a series of vignettes, A Little Piece of Sky introduces an endearing new novelist and a truly unforgettable main character--Song Byrd, a young girl who keenly reports on the world around her. She is African American in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood and the unwanted product of an adulterous affair. While she is poor in the material sense, Song is extraordinarily rich in spirit and it is that inner strength which saves her.

In piercingly insightful prose, Nicole Bailey-Williams takes readers on Song's journey through life as she struggles with feeling like an outsider and intense guilt over her mother's murder. Behind it all, places of pure joy, "dreaming the hurt away," and glorious little pieces of sky shine through. Song's tales--and Bailey-Williams's narrative gift--are truly words to treasure.

NICOLE BAILEY-WILLIAMS is a high school English teacher and has written reviews for Black Issues Book Review, and Publishers Weekly. She is the cohost of "The Literary Review," a book review show that airs on WDAS radio in Philadelphia and its surrounding areas. A graduate of Hampton University, she received a Master's degree from Temple University. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her husband.