We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything to do with us. Rachel Louise Snyder frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence around key stories that explode the common myths — that if things were bad enough victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and more insidiously, that violence inside the home is disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

Join The Community Library and The Advocates for this community event and conversation with Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, winner of a Kirkus Award in Nonfiction, a New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year, and winner of the LA Times Book Award and the New York Public Library's Bernstein Award. Snyder is also the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade and the novel What We’ve Lost is Nothing. Her print work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times magazine, Slate, Salon, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the New Republic, and others. 

She holds a B.A. from North Central College and an M.F.A. from Emerson College, and is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Currently, Snyder is an Associate Professor Creative Writing and Journalism at American University in Washington, DC.

Registration is recommended to save a seat. Snyder's lecture will also be livestreamed on the Library's Vimeo and will be available to watch through November 10, 2022. A book signing with Chapter One will follow.