Kaitlyn Greenidge received her MFA from Hunter College, where she studied with Nathan Englander and Peter Carey, and was Colson Whiteheads writing assistant as part of the Hertog Research Fellowship. Greenidge was the recipient of the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize. She was a Bread Loaf scholar, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace artist-in-residence, and a Johnson State College visiting emerging writer. Her work has appeared in the Believer, the Feminist Wire, At Length, Fortnight Journal, Green Mountains Review, Afrobeat Journal, the Tottenville Review, and American Short Fiction. Originally from Boston, she now lives in Brooklyn.
Ours (2024) Phillip B Williams "Phillip Williams' Ours is a radical re-creation of our pasts. With a keen eye to historical detail and the expansive imagination of a poet, Williams has constructed a jewel of a novel, a deeply felt exploration of the strengthening ties and broken cords of kith and kin under the weight of complicated histories. In the uncertain future that awaits us, Ours illuminates a greater understanding of what it means to be human and the complex, tangled lives and afterlives of enslavement."
The New Naturals (2023) Gabriel Bump "The New Naturals is a tragicomedy for our times, exploring that age-old question of how to connect with our fellow human beings and build community, even as the world makes increasingly less sense. A tour-de-force, full of heart and asking the big questions about life and the mind."
In the Upper Country (2023) Kai Thomas "Kai Thomas's In the Upper Country is a sweeping epic that imagines all the ways our ancestors tried to get free. This is an exciting new voice in fiction, as interested in the complexities of land and belonging as in the vagaries of human love and connection."
The Work Wife (2022) Alison B Hart "The Work Wife deftly explores what labor and ambition mean, in our current moment when we are all questioning our connections to both. A novel with nerve, this is the work of an empathetic mind, deeply curious about what women are asked to sacrifice to make it to the top."
The Foundling (2022) Ann Leary "The Foundling is a gripping account of the ways big, structural decisions can change the intimate lives of ordinary people. Deeply empathetic to its characters with a sense of awe for the ironies of history, Ann Leary explores the complicated ties of community for those who have none, in a world determined to punish the most vulnerable. Through it all, her characters never lose their sense of humanity or sight of what it means to care for one another."
Luster (2020) Raven Leilani "In Luster, Raven Leilani has created a character unlike any other in recent fiction. A slacker black queen, a depressive painter, a damn funny woman. The narrator of this novel tells us of her history and her present life in hypnotic language that is a pleasure to read. Leilani is such a talented writer, I rushed to the end of every outrageous sentence to figure out how she would pull it off."
These Ghosts Are Family (2020) Maisy Card "Maisy Card's relentlessly inventive debut is a thrilling exploration of family, memory and which pasts we choose to haunt us."
The Floating World (2017) C Morgan Babst "This book is an achingly precise diagram of a city and family in heartbreak. Babst's writing is fluid and insidious and hauntingly beautiful. The Boisdores join some of the great families of American fiction, fascinating kinfolk through whom we watch the rise and fall and rise of New Orleans."
Gypsy Moth Summer (2017) Julia Fierro "Julia Fierro's The Gypsy Moth Summer is a deeply satisfying tale of family, first love, and home. The world of Avalon Island is lush, inviting, and deeply complicated, full of the same contradictions that we grapple with day to day. It's a meditation on what makes a community and a reminder that the past is never past and home is a place that is both beautiful and heartbreaking."
