GREAT BLACK HOPE

A Novel by Kimbilio Fellow Rob Franklin

An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.

Rob Franklin

KIMBILIO FELLOW AND AUTHOR

Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. His debut novel, Great Black Hope, is out June 10th from Summit Books / Simon & Schuster.

Image of a seated black man in a pale yellow shirt
Rob’s WEBSITE

Five Questions for Rob Franklin

My superpower is probably having a poet’s ear – I think toiling over word choice and the rhythm of a line for years gave me an intuitive sense for when my prose is working (though, of course, I still manage to toil plenty).

Obsessive. Consistent. Liberating.

I’m coming up on my ten-year anniversary in New York, so I have been thinking a lot about my “perfect New York day” a.k.a what, in an ideal world, I will do to celebrate. It begins with a crisp autumn run in Central Park, then a coffee and a trip to the Guggenheim or Met with a friend; then a couple hours alone: reading, writing, thinking; then I shower and get dressed for the evening: some heavy, hearty Italian meal with a big group of friends. Red wine, gossip, and dancing. I’m in bed by midnight.

After my New York launch at the Public Hotel, I’d like to go to my favorite restaurant in Chinatown: Spicy Village – an unglamorous hole-in-the-wall right beneath my first apartment in the city. It holds a lot of memories and still feels like a kind of home in New York. Oh, and the order is pepper chicken, fried pork dumplings, and a diet coke.

I’m excited to message my high school English teacher Nedra Roberts, who’s now a full time playwright. Infamous on campus for her eccentricity, good taste, and exacting nature, she pushed me as a writer, not only on the level of the sentence, but in my capacity to be daring and honest. She wrote, on a personal essay I wrote at sixteen, the phrase — “Wonderful. Both the essay and you” — words that, evidently, I’ve never forgotten.