The New York Times writes that Graham’s new collection allows readers to “make sense” of mourning both public and private, and explains how Graham’s experiments with language can seem both playful and terrifying. 

The Los Angeles Review of Books delves into Du Bois’s theory of visible racism, Danzy Senna’s New People, and what happens when the body becomes an “inconsistently locked home.” 

Presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization, the $10,000 award honors a writer with a “pioneering spirit in the world of literature.” Chee is the sixth recipient of the award. 

In Lenny Letter, Danzy Senna remembers what it was like to be a teenager in 1985 – big hoop earrings, cigarette budgets, and a disapproving mother – and recalls her sister reading Doug E. Fresh’s palm in a hotel bedroom. 

DC Theatre Scene calls McCraney’s play about African American drag ball culture “beautiful, raw, and real.” 

Inspired by Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colussus,” Sinclair’s ode to America laments, “White is a state of mind. Spangled. Blinding,/ Shining sky awash in all its shining.”

Christian Lorentzen delves into themes of love, anxiety, and innocence in Lacey’s new novel, which he writes are “managed by Lacey to woozy and disquieting effect.” 

In The New York Times, six photographers share work inspired by American poems, including “’N’em” by Jericho Brown and “Ladies’ Arm Wrestling Match at the Blue Diner” by Jenny Johnson. 

The Times praises Klam’s ability to make a well-documented topic – a middle-aged male artist having an affair – seem fresh, and writes that Klam’s new novel “feels like a little miracle.” 

Electric Literature says LaValle’s latest novel about the horrors of fatherhood is a “masterpiece” that will “haunt your dreams.”