Roxane Gay

Explore the concept of belonging and inheritances burdened with the past in this powerful and precisely imagined debut by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. Featuring a diverse cast of characters fighting to survive America's racial and environmental unraveling, My Monticello takes readers on a journey through a near future where a group of Charlottesville neighbors seek refuge in Thomas Jefferson’s historic plantation home. Johnson's characters all search for a home that's both physical and internal, from a Nigerian widower struggling to find his place in a new city to a single mother desperate to "Buy a House Ahead of the Apocalypse." Seamlessly weaving themes of racism, identity, and survival, My Monticello bears witness to America's complicated legacies and introduces an exciting new voice in fiction.

Unfollow Me is an incisive memoir-in-essays about race, progress, and hypocrisy from author Jill Louise Busby, aka Jillisblack. With her background in Diversity & Inclusion, Busby provides an intimate and impertinent critique of both the nonprofit sector and online activist communities. Her commentary is both achingly open-hearted and wryly funny as she discusses tokenism and the difficulty of inhabiting spaces where complicity is the price of entry. Unfollow Me is a self-questioning critique of white fragility, respectability politics, and all the places where fear masquerades as progress.

Set against the backdrop of medieval England, Matrix tells the story of Marie de France, a 17-year-old girl sent to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey. In this new life, Marie finds purpose and love with her mercurial sisters, but as she works to protect and lead them, she must grapple with a world that can never fully accept her. In a mesmerizing portrait of passion and faith, Lauren Groff explores the power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

A black father and a white father come together to seek revenge on the murderers of their gay sons. In Razorblade Tears, two ex-cons, with little in common except their criminal past and love for their dead children, confront their prejudices to take down those who hurt their boys. This fast-paced and provocative story grapples with themes of retribution, change, and maybe even redemption.

This poignant debut novel follows a Vietnamese family who settle in New Orleans and face the challenges of adapting to American life. When Huong arrives with her sons, her husband remains in Vietnam, leaving them to navigate their new lives in the absence of a father figure. As they grow up, their search for identity threatens to tear them apart, until a disaster strikes and they must find a new way to come together. A moving exploration of family ties and the immigrant experience.

A romantic comedy about two people who go off-script as they navigate a fling-turned-relationship amidst the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. When advertising exec Ben Stephens lands an ad campaign featuring movie star Anna Gardiner, it's hard to keep their interactions strictly professional. What starts as harmless flirting turns serious when they reveal personal truths to each other during a family emergency. As their real-life romance heats up, they must decide whether to pursue a Hollywood ending or leave their relationship behind when the cameras stop rolling.

This manifesto and practical guide challenges current models of writing and the workshop, showing how they fail marginalized writers and how cultural expectations inform storytelling. The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind, but this examination of elements of writing and aspects of workshop asks questions to reach writers with diverse backgrounds. Drawing from classic examples, the author invites us to reimagine craft and teaching methods to better reflect the world we write about. A must-read for fiction writers, teachers, and students.