Nafissa Thompson-Spires — The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford - with Nic Stone — at Union Market
Nafissa Thompson-Spires presents her debut novel, *The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford*, in conversation with Nic Stone. Set in Oklahoma near Tulsa after the 1921 massacre, during Prohibition and on the eve of the Great Depression, the novel follows the aftermath of the killing of Richard Milford, an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who built his family’s influence on the labor of Newville’s residents.
Richard’s four wives—Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne—become the leading suspects. As each woman offers her own account of Richard, their conflicting perspectives expose the instability of any single “true” version of the town’s history. The event will explore Thompson-Spires’s darkly funny, genre-bending historical fiction, which examines identity, power, capitalism, political personality cults, social distrust, and the tension between tradition and change.
Thompson-Spires is the award-winning author of *Heads of the Colored People*, which received the PEN Open Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. The collection was also longlisted for the National Book Award and other honors, and she has received a Whiting Award and a United States Artists Grant. Her fiction and essays have appeared in publications including *The Paris Review*, *New York* magazine, *The Root*, *The White Review*, and *Ploughshares*. She holds a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Illinois.
Nic Stone will join Thompson-Spires for the conversation. Stone is the author of the bestselling novels *Dear Martin*, *Dear Justyce*, and *Dear Manny*, along with *Odd One Out*, *Jackpot*, *Chaos Theory*, *Clean Getaway*, and *Fast Pitch*. Her work has received recognition from organizations including YALSA, the American Library Association, the CBC, NPR, and the Southern Book Prize. She lives in Atlanta.
When: October 15, 2026
Showtime: 7:00 p.m.
Venue: Politics and Prose at Union Market, 1324 4th Street NE, Washington, DC 20002
Tickets: Free
Seating: First come, first served
Participants: Nafissa Thompson-Spires, in conversation with Nic Stone
Run time: Not specified
Accessibility: To request accommodations or ask about accessibility, email events@politics-prose.com, ideally at least one week before the event. Requests will be considered up to the event time.
Related book: *The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford: A Novel* is available for preorder in hardcover for $26.00, with a listed publication date of October 13, 2026.