Advice from the Vets

Returning Fellows Christi Cartwright (’13), Rosalyn Story (’13), and Andy Johnson (’14) will join the class of ’16 for the Annual Retreat in Taos.  We asked our vets to offer some advice to our Newbie Kimbees. Christi Cartwright Says: Accept writing friendships and kindnesses from whomever/wherever they are given. Writing is a lonely venture and kindness helps […]

Deesha Philyaw (’15) Interviews Cole Lavalais (’13, ’15)

Cole Lavalais’s arresting debut novel, The Summer of the Cicadas, engages with a mother-daughter relationship, mental health, and first love, set on the campus of small black college in the South. The novel’s main character Viola (Vi) Moon is still emotionally fragile after a recent hospitalization at a mental health facility, but she’s also determined […]

Congratulations to Kimbilio’s Hurston/Wright Nominees

Sanderia Faye (’13) nominee in Debut Fiction for MOURNER’S BENCH Naomi Jackson (faculty ’17) nominee in Debut Fiction for THE STAR SIDE OF BIRD HILL Angela Flournoy (faculty ’15) nominee in Fiction for THE TURNER HOUSE The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award TM  honors the best in Black literature in the United States and around the globe. […]

Dennis Norris II Writing for AWSOME SPORTS PROJECT

Finding Michelle Kwan: A Black Boy’s Childhood on Ice By Dennis Norris II Long before it actually happened, I tried to tell the world that I was a figure skater. I tried on Saturday afternoons, back in the nineties when skating was on TV every weekend. I tried by pushing all the furniture to the edges […]

An Interview with ‘The Loss of All Lost Things’ author Amina Gautier (’13)

From the Evanston Public Library Blog: Amina Gautier writes short stories, and her short story collections win awards.  It’s about that simple.  Back in 2011, for instance, her debut collectionAt-Risk earned the Flannery O’Connor Award and the First Horizon Award among other honors, and her 2014 follow-upNow We Will Be Happy won the Praire Schooner […]

From the Photo Album: National Reading Series-Detroit

Brian Gilmore (’14, ’15) On Balancing the Writing Life

THE BEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING from RIPEN THE PAGE LITERARY MAGAZINE I am a poet and public interest advocate (lawyer, and now clinical professor of law). Everyday, I work with words, on the page, and as poets like to say – the stage, in order to impart some truth about the lives we lead and […]

Desiree Cooper (’13, ’15) in BLOOD ORANGE REVIEW

Sex Coffee by Desiree Cooper You walk into the coffeehouse and pick a seat beside the thin woman whose beauty is coiled into tight vines of hair. Never seen her here before, you think as you slide into the bench beside her, careful not to get caught looking in her direction. You take off your […]

Coal Lavalais (’13, ’15) Interviewed on THE TOAST

In Cole Lavalais’ debut novel Summer of the Cicadas, Viola “Vi” Moon hopes to leave her experience at a mental health facility behind when she enrolls in a small black college in the south, but the stability she hoped she’d gain fractures more quickly than she anticipated. Vi thinks the best way to regain her […]

Dennis Norris II (’15) Interviewed by Rion Amilcar Scott (’13)

FROM SMOKE LONG QUARTERLY Smoke and Mirrors: An Interview with Dennis Norris II Your story, “Daddy’s Boy,” devastated me when I first read it, flooded me with discomfort. I had to step away and think about it, come back to it and read it again and then sort through competing emotions: admiration, disgust, sympathy. What […]