A must-read treasure trove of practical wisdom for Black writers, writing teachers, and anyone interested in the craft.
A one-of-a-kind anthology featuring guidance and perspectives from acclaimed Black writers.
“Born out of absolute generosity and hope for the future of Black writing,” this collection of 31 essays and interviews, edited by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Brown, features a who’s-who roster of Black fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, and essayists. Though the book is for “anyone who is a student of the craft,” its primary purpose is to inform and encourage emerging Black writers in particular. The text includes original essays from Daniel Omotosho Black, who examines the rhythm of Black vernacular; Jacqueline Woodson, who shows how to discern what characters want and how they’re going to get it; and Tiphanie Yanique, who contributes a piece called “Fiction Forms: How to Make Fun and Profundity Possible in Fiction.” The book also includes previously published works such as a 1979 interview with Ernest J. Gaines and Callaloo editor Charles Rowell. Some of the essays come with writing exercises, such as Crystal Wilkinson’s “Asking Questions and Excavating Memory: Creating Complex Fictional Characters,” while others focus on revision and how to read to become a better writer. Rita Dove begins her piece by noting, “I do not like how-to-write manuals.” Still, she decided to pen an essay to help writers “avert disaster” and to “extol the passion that drives the writing.” Brown’s collection is conversational, anecdotal, and collaborative in tone throughout. Divided into eight sections with titles such as “Who Your People?” “Where You At?” and “What It Look Like?” this isn’t your average craft book. It’s something exponentially better, more engrossing, and more easily applicable for writers in undergraduate and graduate writing programs as well as those in no program at all.
A must-read treasure trove of practical wisdom for Black writers, writing teachers, and anyone interested in the craft.Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780063278189
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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