Despite working on it for 40 years, Ralph Ellison never completed his second novel, a follow-up to Invisible Man. In 2010 alone, Salt Lake City native Adam Bradley not only helped shepherd Ellison’s unfinished work into public view, but has published a fascinating critical study of the author’s fiction.

A scholar of African American literature and the editor of academic studies of rap lyrics, Bradley has spent years working with Ellison’s literary executor John Callahan, exploring the thousands of pages left behind of the incomplete novel published this year as Three Days Before the Shooting … In Ralph Ellison In Progress, Bradley looks at both Invisible Man and Three Days, as well as pivotal biographical moments in Ellison’s life. In so doing, he reveals what Ellison’s creative process—through journals and multiple drafts—tells us about himself. Join the author as he discusses the work in his hometown. 

Adam Bradley: Ralph Ellison in Progress @ The King’s English Bookshop, 1511 S. 1500 East, 801-484-9100, May 27, 7 p.m. KingsEnglish.com