Kiese Laymon

Jul 23, 2024 | memoirland.substack.com | Sari Botton |Mark Armstrong |Kiese Laymon |Deesha Philyaw

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing.

Jun 12, 2024 | citylights.com | Kiese Laymon

"By adding six rich new essays, deftly curating seven from the original book, and reworking the chronology, [Laymon has] made a once solid collection superb. This revision opens with Laymon in full bloom as an artist and introspector in his essay 'Mississippi: An Awakening, in Days.' Contextualizing the 'where and why' of Laymon's making as an artist provides the narrative thrust of the book, as readers are escorted back in time, ending, chronologically, at the beginning.

Nov 14, 2023 | oxfordamerican.org | Peter Guralnick |John Lingan |Jamie Quatro |Kiese Laymon

GEORGIA ON MY MINDListeningThe Music of GeorgiaEditors’ NoteThere’s nobody like Blind Willie McTellby Peter GuralnickThe moony lyricism of Johnny Mercerby John LinganPondering the Indigo Girls, awaiting clarityby Jamie QuatroDA ART OF STORYTELLIN’ (A PREQUEL)OutKast’s Southern Stankby Kiese Laymon FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTIONInnovationGram Parsons’s prophetic Nudie suitby Elyssa EastThe Skillet Lickers’ pickin’ picnicby Greg ReishMC Shy D, an original ATLienby Will StephensonThomas A.

Aug 23, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Kiese Laymon

For Jason Reynolds, a library is a playground, a dance floor, a place to experience the whole range of human emotion—and no one better exemplifies that mindset than Langston Hughes. Exploring the poet’s life and literary legacy, Reynolds’ debut picture book, There Was a Party for Langston (Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum, Oct.

Aug 22, 2023 | electricliterature.com | Menachem Kaiser |Sheila Heti |Mina Seçkin |Kiese Laymon

Reading Lists Ruth Madievsky, author of "All-Night Pharmacy," recommends characters struggling under the weight of their familial legacy Electric Literature Urgently Needs Your Help For the 15,000 people who visit our site every day, reading Electric Literature costs nothing. And yet Electric Lit is not free. We need to raise $25,000 by December 31, 2024 to keep Electric Literature going into next year. If the continued existence of Electric Literature means something to you, please make a...