It somehow seems that Percival Everett, one of the most inimitable and distinct voices in contemporary American fiction, who has been a finalist for some of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes, is still largely unknown to mainstream readers. It’s impossible to resist reading that fact into the symbolism of the publicity photo on the […]
Lalita Rattapong’s New Microwave I’m having trouble with Lalita Rattapong’s new microwave, issues with distance. Like, can the neighbors feel the universe fold in on itself whenever she reheats leftover panang? Do they hear time collide, past in present, echoes from a world older than the one they thought they knew, screeching in […]
Perhaps this sounds like Saunders has reached his old prophet stage and is yelling truths from a carved stone tablet, but it is not that at all. Saunders remains allergic to the polemical. In the past, sitting down to didactically write about things that angered him led to failed stories, he says. Saunders, who describes […]
BUT DID YOU DIE By Shinelle L. Espaillat Shreds of winter sliced the March morning as sunlight struggled to pierce the clouds. Mellen pushed herself to keep running up the hill, though each muscle fiber screamed and her breath came in hard, hitching explosions. Behind her, an angry rottweiler closed the distance, its owner barking […]
Jonathan Escoffery on Navigating Identity, Blackness, and Literary Fame Join Kimbilio online and in person @Left Bank Books on September 12, as we celebrate the publications of IF I SURVIVE YOU and Fellow LaToya Watkins PERISH. https://www.left-bank.com/event/kimbilio-w-lbb-presents-jonathan-escoffery-and-latoya-watkins
From TEXAS MONTHLY: The Story of Latoya Watkin’s PERISH
Watkins’s debut novel, Perish (Penguin / Tiny Reparations Books, August 23), revises and expands on that early novella. It tells the story of Helen Jean Turner, the dying matriarch of a Black family, and her descendants, many of whom are returning home to the fictional West Texas town of Jerusalem to say their last goodbyes. Helen Jean has suffered from […]
