Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
His work has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories.
He was raised in the Bronx and Brooklyn and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
An Autobiography of Skin (2023) Lakiesha Carr "Lakiesha Carr writes achingly . . . [A] distinguished debut - its bodily rhythms, its sensory evocativeness, its quality of attention to the human soul - perhaps what defines it most is its insistent drive toward honesty, toward the compelling truths that could only have been uncovered by the angled vision of this particular author."
The Revivalists (2022) Christopher M Hood "From the very first page, Christopher Hood's debut forcefully claims the reader's attention and does not release it until the entire fascinating, suspenseful journey is done. This is an American story through and through, written in keen, lively prose, stirringly speculative while being alarmingly recognizable and real. The Revivalists is urgent, beguiling, compassionate, and strikingly relevant."
Perish (2022) LaToya Watkins "LaToya Watkins writes with a gaze that is warm and compassionate, but courageous and unflinching, refusing to look away from difficulty. Perish is a resonant debut novel, a robust family story told with beautiful cadences and textures. Watkins has a wonderful heart that animates every page from beginning to end."
A Map for the Missing (2022) Belinda Huijuan Tang "A Map for the Missing gives vivid life to the uncanny truths of return, reunion, and time. A simple mystery - a father who has vanished - forcefully animates the story, but what casts a spell over readers and makes this novel so memorable is the attention, both loving and piercing, with which the author regards her characters. Belinda Huijuan Tang's debut is vigorous and deft, intricate and precise."
Dogs of Summer (2022) Andrea Abreu "This slim novel's scope and intensity are shockingly, magnificently large, and the sentences blast off the pages with all the sordidness and wonder of early adolescence. Readers will be unable to resist the spell of Dogs of Summer, a hilarious, devastating story that is brilliantly attuned to the erotics of friendship, the intoxicating muddle of identification and desire, and the power of both the sublime and the profane. The unforgettable girls at the center of Andrea Abreu's moving debut are two of the liveliest fictional creations I've come across in quite a long time."
Rainbow Rainbow (2022) Lydia Conklin "Rainbow Rainbow is a debut that many of us have long been waiting for. The sentences in this collection leap off the page with delightfully vivid animation, and the queer and trans characters in each story take journeys that cover a breathtaking range of emotional distance. Lydia Conklin, above all, understands the power of humor, to surprise and tickle us, to regale and disarm us, and, in the end, to devastate us with truths that are full of mystery and melancholy."
Milk Blood Heat (2021) Dantiel W Moniz "The stories in this memorable debut have the mood of late summer evenings, sultry and dark, thick with the heat of minds and bodies engaged in sin and transgression, suffused with complicated desire, boldness, and shame. I suggest you pay attention to this book and to this voice, wherever it goes on to take us. With this cast of lovable, heartbreaking characters, Dantiel Moniz is announcing her incredible range and sensitivity, as well as her fearlessness in looking squarely at our human condition, in all its raggedness and beauty."
