About this item
A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes.Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous-from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids' backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide-while others are devastatingly poignant-a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture.
About the Author
Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeny's "The Organist," The Paris Review Daily, Dissent, Buzzfeed Books, The White Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, and other publications. Her short story "Heads of the Colored People..." won StoryQuarterly's 2016 Fiction Prize, judged by Mat Johnson. Her work has received support from Callaloo, Tin House, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. HEADS OF THE COLORED PEOPLE was long listed for the National Book Award and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.
