The author of a debut novel about diversity in the workplace on how black people act around white people, embracing her hair, and what’s changed a year after George Floyd’s murderZakiya Dalila Harris was born and raised in Connecticut and is currently based in Brooklyn. Now a full-time writer, she previously worked in book publishing, an experience she draws on in her highly anticipated debut novel, The Other Black Girl, which combines thriller with social satire to tell the story of Nella, the only black employee at a fictional publishing house, until Hazel joins the company. The book charts how the two become frenemies, explores the challenges of surviving in a systemically racist workplace, and was the subject of a 15-way auction prior to publication in the US.What were your own experiences in publishing and how have they played into the book?I worked in publishing for two and a half years. I was an editorial assistant then promoted to assistant editor. I felt fortunate, as a part of me enjoyed editing and I felt I was good at it, but it’s also an exhausting job for an entry-level person in terms of the pay. I was also one of the very few black people in the company – it wasn’t as bad as Nella in the book, but I was the only black woman in editorial in a full-time position for a while. I thought: why does it feel like we’re living in 1955 still, in terms of what we value? Publishing is such a rich, easily spoofable world.Code-switching is the act of switching up how... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-06-05 17:00:15 UTC ]
Arthur's debut novel Once a Queen, a young adult "portal fantasy," talks to PW about writing her first novel, and her love of fantasy. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-02-20 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Arthur's debut novel Once a Queen, a young adult "portal fantasy," talks to PW about writing her first novel, and her love of fantasy. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-02-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Scott Guild's debut novel (and companion album) 'Plastic' is a dark and entertaining saga about a postapocalyptic world populated by plastic figurines. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-02-15 21:43:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this
When I was ghostwriting full-time, I produced twenty books in fourteen years. Thanks to a suggestion from my literary agent, I realized a ghostwriter might make a great heroine—they’re under tremendous pressure, often while adjacent to the fame machine—so Mari Hawthorn, the ghostwriter at the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-02-15 12:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Andrew Ewell's debut novel 'Set for Life' is well-written but doesn't fulfill its potential. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-02-09 16:00:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The debut novel from Leo Vardiashvili, 'Hard by a Great Forest,' has its commercial trappings but ultimately lands with lyrical and heartbreaking resonance. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-01-31 18:43:16 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Temim Fruchter’s debut novel centers around a young woman, Shiva, seeking answers about her family’s past after the death of her father. Told in revolving perspectives, between women in Shiva’s family and a mysterious, omniscient narrator, the book explores the interior lives of women,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-01-24 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Temim Fruchter’s debut novel centers around a young woman, Shiva, seeking answers about her family’s past after the death of her father. Told in revolving perspectives, between women in Shiva’s family and a mysterious, omniscient narrator, the book explores the interior lives of women,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-01-24 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In Kaveh Akbar's brilliant debut novel, 'Martyr!', an Iranian American man in addiction recovery becomes obsessed with the concept of martyrdom. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-01-22 11:00:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Katherine Min's Korean American debut novel was ignored. After she died in 2019, publishers worked to put out her second novel, 'The Fetishist.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-01-18 11:00:57 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The debut novel 'Dead in Long Beach, California,' is a sharp, dazzling turn for Compton-raised author Venita Blackburn, who made her name with lightning-fast fiction. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-01-11 11:00:44 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Set in World War II, Vanessa Chan’s utterly gripping debut novel The Storm We Made is the story of an unlikely spy and the consequences of her actions. When Cecily, a bored Malayan housewife in British-colonized Malaya, encounters the charismatic General Fujiwara, she is seduced not only by the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-01-02 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
With El Niño slated to drop a warm, wet winter on most of the US in the coming months, everybody’s going to need something good to read while the weather outside is frightful. Engadget’s well-read staff have some suggestions: our favorite books of 2023! We’ve got a phenomenal assortment of... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-12-25 16:30:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Housemates, the highly-anticipated debut novel by Emma Copley Eisenberg, which will be published by Hogarth on May 28th, 2024. You can pre-order your copy here. When Bernie answers Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two find... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-12-21 12:15:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Gray’s idiom may be modern, but it embraces many traditional things; not only autobiographical realism, but low comedy, afterlife fantasy, scattershot satire, nightmarish allegory, self-referential metafiction, tender eroticism, lunatic scholarship and profuse literary borrowings.” —David... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-12-19 09:57:38 UTC ]
More news stories like this
A new volume of the Black feminist’s previously unpublished writing is read in audiobook form by a full cast of Black women. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-12-15 10:00:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Where exactly is tech going? Joanne McNeil's debut novel 'Wrong Way' and billionaire Marc Andreessen's 'Techno-Optimist Manifesto' offer some clues. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-12-12 11:00:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Psychological thriller Eileen is an adaptation of the 2015 debut novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, who often writes about female loners, giving special attention to the parts of her characters that many would consider unbefitting of a leading lady. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2023-12-08 09:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Larry Hughes, who began his publishing career as an assistant editor at Pocket Books in 1949 and rose to become chairman of the Hearst Trade Book Group some 40 years later, died on November 14. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-28 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Farah Ali’s debut novel The River, The Town is a haunting portrait of lives relegated to the margins by capitalism and its resulting byproduct: the inequitable distribution of resources. The world of the novel centers two places, the Town and the City, and the narrative focus, in typical... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-11-20 12:01:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this