Search

For fans of The Burning Girl by Claire Messud and Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi, a stunning, gut-punch of a novel that follows a young Indian American woman who, in the wake of tragedy, must navigate her family's expectations as she grapples with a complicated love and loss. On the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, Heera and her best friends, siblings Marie and Marco, tease the fun out of life in Raleigh, North Carolina, with acts of rebellion and delinquency. They paint the town's water towers with red anarchy symbols and hang out at the local bus station to pickpocket money for their Great Escape to New York. But no matter how much Heera defies her strict upbringing, she's always avoided any real danger—until one devastating night changes everything. In its wake, Marco reinvents himself as Crash and spends his days womanizing and burning through a string of jobs. Meanwhile, Heera's dream to go to college in New York is suddenly upended. Over the years, Heera's and Crash's paths cross and recross on a journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, and betrayals. Heart-wrenching, darkly funny, and buoyed by gorgeous prose, Circa is at once an irresistible love story and a portrait of a young woman torn between duty and her own survival, between obligation and freedom.

Taboos and Transgressions: Stories of Wrongdoings, is an anthology that includes fiction and nonfiction. It was edited by Luanne Smith, Kerry Neville, and Devi S. Laskar, and focuses on breaking the rules with stories by Pam Houston, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kim Addonizio alongside exceptional work by both noted and emerging writers. The anthology offers a scope of voices, styles, stories, and wrongdoings. From infidelity to family prejudices, from breaking the law to broken promises, from losing everything to finding empowerment, characters in these pieces offer a look at stepping over the line in all too human ways. Edited by Luanne Smith, Kerry Neville, and Devi S. Laskar, the anthology represents the best of both solicited and unsolicited work. Unsolicited material has been read by judge Maurice Carlos Ruffin and prizes awarded to one winning story and two runners up.

This Washington Post'Best Book of the Year'grapples with the complexities of the second–generation American experience, what it means to be a woman of color in the workplace, and a sister, a wife, and a mother to daughters in today's America.When a woman—known only as Mother—moves her family from Atlanta to its wealthy suburbs, she discovers that neither the times nor the people have changed since her childhood in a small Southern town. Despite the intervening decades, Mother is met with the same questions: Where are you from? No, where are you really from? The American–born daughter of Bengali immigrants, she finds that her answer―Here―is never enough.Mother's simmering anger breaks through one morning, when, during a violent and unfounded police raid on her home, she finally refuses to be complacent. As she lies bleeding from a gunshot wound, her thoughts race from childhood games with her sister and visits to cousins in India, to her time in the newsroom before having her three daughters, to the early days of her relationship with a husband who now spends more time flying business class than at home.Drawing inspiration from the author's own terrifying experience of a raid on her home, Devi S. Laskar's debut novel explores, in exquisite, lyrical prose, an alternate reality that might have been.'The entire novel takes place over the course of a single morning... and the effect is devastatingly potent.'—Marie Claire'Devi S. Laskar's The Atlas of Reds and Blues is as narratively beautiful as it is brutal... I've never read a novel that does nearly as much in so few pages.'—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

The editors of Graffiti gave the contributors a special challenge: to write in a way that centers neither'whiteness'nor'anti-whiteness”, that is not limited by their struggle, their oppression, or how their characters will be received by the white imagination. To create a literary safe space of creative play far removed from the white gaze. A place where POC can focus on one another in solidarity. The results are joyous and mind-expanding. Contributors to Graffiti include American Book Award-winner Tongo Eisen-Martin, award-winning fantasy author L. Penelope, award-winning writer Vickie Vértiz, alongside Kirin Khan, Gary Dauphin, Sarah LaBrie, Alycia Pirmohamed, Kanika Punwani, and many other acclaimed writers. It features a foreword by poet and novelist Elmaz Abinader, and an introduction by novelist Nayomi Munaweera. Through poetry, short stories, and essays, the works in Graffiti expose lives that move in unexpected ways, rendering characters who don't fit the cultural tropes we cling to. Graffiti shows what writers-of-color do when they are given permission to scribble, scrawl, romanticize, and speculate, without being politicized or exoticized. I love the originality of the voices in Graffiti, the brave new writers I've discovered here, in addition to several I admired already. I love the concept of writing beyond whiteness, being unconcerned about any gaze other than our own. Kudos to the editors for collecting work that is at once meaningful and playful. I hope this book will find its way into the hands of many readers. It just might transform them. Mashallah! —Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of The Forest of Enchantments The voices in Graffiti howl with a collective energy and strength that is unmatched. These writers have the capacity to both tear you apart and heal you in one fell swoop. Each piece offers an opportunity for us to examine the ways in which communities of difference can band together to create a space for a revolution to take shape and flourish. Graffiti isn't just a brilliantly composed collection, it is an absolutely essential one. I feel fundamentally changed after having read this powerful anthology. —Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime Graffiti springs forth like an anthem from a future, where, unaware of the white gaze and ethnic codification, people of color are one. —Reyna Grande, author of The Distance Between Us