It’s our pleasure to announce that we are now working with debut author, educator, journalist, and editor Cassandra Lane.

Cassandra grew up poor in the South, but rich in experience. The land, the people, the dialects, the stories, the spirituality — all of that influenced her deeply, helped mold her as a writer. She was able to go to college, study journalism, became the first Black and first woman editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. She started a career in newspaper journalism after college, but her deepest dream was to write books, always.

She left her full-time newspaper reporting job in New Orleans just before the year 2000. She started freelancing for local and national publications while part of a powerful creative and cultural writing group. She moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue the MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. After graduating, She combined her love for writing and children and started teaching journalism, literature, and composition at high schools in Highland Park and South L.A.

She has also worked as a college applications advisor, senior writer for an education non-profit, community relations manager for the Dodgers, and she is currently managing editor of L.A. Parent magazine.

Cassandra’s first-length book, We Are Bridges, will be published by Feminist Press this coming April 20, 2021.

We Are Bridges turns to creative nonfiction to reclaim a family history from violent erasure so that a mother can gift her child with an ancestral blueprint for their future. Haunting and poetic, this debut traces the strange fruit borne from the roots of personal loss in one Black family—and considers how to take back one’s American story.

“In this narrative, Lane seeks an origin story, searching for what facts are available and wondering about the legacy she is passing on. . . . A multiangled exploration of family trauma and the forging of an identity.” —Kirkus Reviews

“In this evocative memoir, Cassandra Lane deftly uses the act of imagination to reclaim her ancestors’ story as a backdrop for telling her own. She renders each interior life with such tenderness and toughness that the tradition of black women’s storytelling leaps forward within these pages—into fresh, daring, and excitingly new territory. Lane’s compelling voice couldn’t be more timely.” —Bridgett M. Davis, author of The World according to Fannie Davis

“Cassandra Lane approaches motherhood, generational trauma, and hope (and fear) for the future from a multitude of angles in a personal story that is utterly captivating. Her writing is beautiful and truly embraces readers.” —Jennifer Baker, editor of Everyday People