LOCATION: Plenty Bookshop, Cookeville, TN

TIME: 5:00 PM 

Briana N. Cox will discuss her debut horror novel Indigent with Lauren Thoman. Signing to follow. 

About Indigent: 

Leigh Pierce Estates is home to a diverse array of tenants: working mothers, immigrants, the forgotten elderly. All working poor—and all in danger. 

Because the tenants of Leigh Pierce are disappearing.

Live-in handyman Xavier seems to be the only one who notices. Or cares. After a chance encounter with the culprit, he is left infected with something terrifying, thrust into a surreal nightmare of starvation and consumption that is all too familiar.

Succumbing to his infection, Xavier is drawn into the cobbled-together family squatting in Leigh Pierce’s basement. People who, through a myriad of roads, fell into the same self-destructive cycle of indigency, harboring dark secrets and darker appetites.

Now, Xavier is forced to confront the cost of survival in a world that has disregarded him, lost in a messy family dynamic of codependency and complicity—a dynamic he’s desperate to break.

Briana N Cox (she/they) is the oldest of seven children and a first-generation academic. She holds a BA in cognitive science from Swarthmore College and an MS in speech-language pathology from Purdue University. Briana has been a writing Fellow through The TN Playwright’s Studio, Stowe Story Labs, Bend Base Camp Feature Lab, Stage 32 Feature Competition, and the Moonshot Initiative Feature Accelerator. She has won Best Script at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival and Best Tennessee Writer at the Nashville Film Festival.  They have additionally been featured in Variety magazine, the 2024 Next List of screenwriters to watch for, and FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. Briana writes genre stories from the margins, illuminating the experiences of overlooked demographics with authenticity, dignity, and dark humor.