From Salon: It has been five years since the introduction of Dolen Perkins-Valdez to the literary world. “Wench,” her debut novel, hit the New York Times Bestsellers List in the winter of 2011 to the drumbeat of both spectacular reviews and the savvy use of what were then fledgling marketing tools, Twitter and Facebook. Since […]
Ravi will be a featured presenter at the Kimbilio/SMU Litfest Reading on October 15th. Save the date! The Burden of History: an Interview with Ravi Howard “Growing up in Montgomery, I heard stories about the Civil Rights Movement from people who never became famous. That experience had an impact on my storytelling.” by SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS […]
ABR: How did you develop an interest in writing poetry and where does your inspiration to write poems come from? WABUKE: Poetry was my first love, but it took me a long, circular time to be strong in the work. I wrote my first poem when I was six. It was about an elephant named […]
Kimbilio Faculty Member Mat Johnson’s new novel is published this week. Read Mat’s essay in the New York Times on PROVING MY BLACKNESS: I grew up a black boy who looked like a white one. My parents divorced when I was 4, and I was raised mostly by my black mom, in a black neighborhood […]
THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN GILMORE BY KIMA JONES October 14th, 2014 As the events in Ferguson, MO unfolded this August, I joined millions of other Americans to watch it play out on Twitter. This is all we knew: a young unarmed black man was shot, repeatedly, by a white police officer. The young man’s […]
You Can Feel It Like a Demon, Swallowing You Slow: An Interview with Marlon James By Andrew Ervin | August 13th, 2014 – 09:00 am Marlon James is no longer a promising writer. He’s no longer a writer of enormous potential. That’s because his third novel A Brief History of Seven Killings places him securely among our most vital contemporary […]
David Haynes is a true visionary. When the Dean of Southern Methodist University asked him to name the one thing he would work on if given the chance, Haynes said he would found a Center for African American fiction to increase diversity in literature and publishing. The Dean said yes, and David Haynes went to […]
Daniel José Older is a champion for equality in contemporary literature. His recent Buzzfeed article shook up the media world with its scintillating analysis on the lack of diversity in mainstream publishing…and what we need to do to change the situation. And, when a reviewer relied on a startlingly racist double standard while reviewing Long Hidden, […]
