Dolen Perkins-Valdez on NPR
Dolen Perkins-Valdez wants to change readers’ perspective on the Civil War. Her best-selling debut novel, Wench, explored the lives of slave women — not on Southern plantations, but in a resort for slaveowners’ mistresses in Ohio. Her new book, Balm, is set in the post-war period, and it’s also in an unexpected […]
Jaime Moore in BOOK RIOT
Building a Better Canon: Stories of the Mixed Experience I grew up an awkward, bookish mixed kid. I didn’t feel like I fit in with most of the kids around me partly due to my desire to hang out in the library instead of the soccer field, and partly because of my weird family. My […]
Cole Lavalais in APOGEE
Paradox Lana closed the bedroom door firmly behind her, but it didn’t block out their noise. Even in the elusive moments when screams and screeches and sobbing stopped bouncing off of every solid surface, the reverberation remained. No stranger to self-sacrifice, Lana had done what she was expected to do, until, of course, she discovered […]
Lesley Arimah Wins AWP Writing Award
Each year AWP offers three scholarships of $500 each to emerging writers who wish to attend a writers’ conference, center, retreat, festival, or residency. The scholarships are applied to fees for winners who attend one of the member programs in AWP’s Directory of Conferences & Centers. Winners and six finalists also receive a one-year individual membership […]
Mat Johnson in BuzzFeed
This week we’re celebrating the publication of novels by Kimbilio Faculty Members Mat Johnson and Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Here’s an article by Mat from BuzzFeed: Yo, I’m a mulatto. And I have to tell you, it’s great. I was black for most of my life, which is also great, but the thing is I look white […]
The “Missing” Chapter from SONG OF THE SHANK
Recently, BOMB Magazine published a chapter that had been excised from Kimbilio Faculty Member Jeffrey Renard Allen’s SONG OF THE SHANK. Making Tom (Return): Behind the Scenes by Jeffery Renard Allen He is Tom at the same time that he is too preposterous to be Tom. (Root distinction, difference: Juluster is a rare one, but […]
Hope Wabuke Interviewed in The African Book Review
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 […]
Khaliah Williams in Buzzfeed
Recently Kimbilio Fellow Khaliah Williams helped lead a Write-In for Youth in Baltimore. She writes about it here in Buzzfeed: I’m not from Baltimore. The five years I’ve lived here are a long time to me, but they’re a blip in the grand scheme of things. The kind of Baltimore story that has been at […]
Pub Day for Dolen’s Balm!
Today we welcome the long anticipated 2nd novel from Kimbilio faculty member Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly says: The elegantly crafted second novel from Perkins-Valdez (after Wench) captures the fierce energy, diversity, and suffering of Civil War–era Chicago. At its heart are three strangers—two black, one white—whose lives intersect after each arrives in their […]
