A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and Detroit community activist. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010, and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging […]
Stories by Dianca and Nicole have been selected by Stuart Dybek from one hundred finalists and semi-finalists for inclusion in the 2016 edition of THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS. The book is scheduled for release in late October. Read more here about the THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2016.
Glory By Lesley Nneka Arimah When Glory’s parents christened her Glorybetogod Ngozi Akunyili, they did not foresee Facebook’s “real name” policy, nor the weeks she would spend populating forms and submitting copies of her bills and driver’s license and the certificate that documented her birth on September 9, 1986, a rainy Tuesday, at 6:45 p.m., after […]
THE SATURDAY RUMPUS INTERVIEW: ANGELA FLOURNOY BY DEESHA PHILYAW February 13th, 2016 As a faculty member at the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction’s summer 2015 retreat in Taos, writer Angela Flournoy delivered a craft talk entitled “Talk Isn’t Cheap” that was part literary, part musicology, and 100% unexpected. She shared that Stevie Wonder’s 1973 […]
Apogee Journal is excited to welcome Esmé-Michelle Watkins as our newest Fiction Editor on our editorial team. See what she has to say about being a writer and lawyer, literary justice, and the book that was so spectacular, she threw it against the wall. Apogee Journal [AJ]: Welcome to Apogee Journal! As a fiction writer […]
Daddy’s Boy by Dennis Norris II January 18, 2016 Art by Katelin Kinney 1. Open your mouth. Sing, boy. Rise up from your pew and praise Him. Take your hands off your hips. Don’t dance, don’t smile, just clap. Firm up those wrists and sing. Your mouth is His. Those lips? That voice? Speaking of […]
Renee shared excerpts from this story at the 2015 retreat (see featured image). Applications for Kimbilio Fellowships are now open. Meet Behind Mars Renee Simms Dr. Lutz, You’ve requested that I write a statement to the school board about The Night of the Yellow Mustard Penis, and I’ve tried to pull together all of the evidence that […]
CORNROWS Lydia took the rat tail end of the comb and slid it over her daughter’s scalp. The hair’s thickness reminded Lydia of the blue wildrye that Rochelle had braided in the woods behind the domestic violence shelter where they currently lived. “Public art,” Rochelle had said about the closed lotus formation that emerged in […]
