Cassandra Lane

Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She is winner of the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and author of We Are Bridges, which NPR named a “Books We Love” in 2021.” Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA. She formerly worked as a newspaper reporter, high school English and journalism teacher, college admissions advisor, senior writer, and community relations manager for the Dodgers. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s “Conception” series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Millions, LitHub and elsewhere. She is editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine.

Cassandra can be found at cassandralane.net

Charitable Organization: Supermarkt LA

Praise

“We Are Bridges makes a stunning contribution to what must become our collective memory.”
—NPR

“Cassandra Lane writes with the urgency driven to the page by the necessities of that first great art: motherhood. We Are Bridges is a book of history, and as such, it uncovers and recovers the truths no classroom teacher will ever reveal to the children who need to know them most: ‘Let the dead bury the dead, Jesus said, but here I am: guilty of pining after my dead. Not knowing one’s story is like being buried alive.’ More than that, it is a love story, a book of how—in spite of every obstacle—black people still make themselves vulnerable enough to take the leap and fall in (and survive!) love.”
—Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Tradition

“We Are Bridges is a gorgeous memoir that knits together the past and present with Cassandra Lane’s fierce and beautiful prose. Each sentence pulls readers through the generations, like a song with haunting lyrics. Lane shows us that family—black family—is a blazing kaleidoscope of legacy and memory, reflections illuminated by this talented writer’s acuity and tenderness.”
—Dana Johnson, author of Elsewhere, California