black authors
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VSB's Damon Young Wins Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Award for What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker
What’s more exciting than any work of fiction? The news that one of our favorite essayists, colleagues and play cousins is being recognized for his brilliance! As reported by Publishers Weekly (and our work Slack), Damon Young’s debut book of essays, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, was recently named the nonfiction winner of…
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Doin' Big Thangs: The Root's Michael Harriot Inks a Two-Book Publishing Deal; Will Bring 'Wypipology' to the Masses
He has clapped back at our hate mail weekly; regularly educates us on the inextricable links between American history and racism; has called out Pete Buttigieg on the biases and policies that most affect black America (prompting a sit-down with the presidential hopeful himself); and just this past weekend, The Root’s Michael Harriot broke Black…
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Praisesong for the Writer: The Literary World Mourns the Death of Author Paule Marshall
“Heartbreaking news…Another beloved elder has crossed over,” tweeted two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage on Thursday afternoon. On the heels of Toni Morrison’s death on Aug. 5, the beloved elder Nottage was referring to was author Paule Marshall, who died on Monday at age 90 in Richmond, Va., after a yearslong struggle with dementia, the…
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In More Than Enough, Elaine Welteroth Discusses the Double-Edged Sword of #SucceedingWhileBlack
Behind every black woman’s success story is generally a well-developed talent for code-switching and at least one person (often, far more than one) who questions her right to succeed. As Elaine Welteroth recounts in her new memoir, More Than Enough, she experienced plenty of both while building her reputation as one of the most influential…
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With a New Memoir, Elaine Welteroth Reminds Us That We’re More Than Enough
She’s known as an arbiter of millennial cool-girl style, but as Elaine Welteroth told Refinery29, she started out just like the rest of us: “a hot mess.” Specifically, she was speaking about the video application she prepared in a long-ago attempt to score an internship at Essence magazine. Notably, it featured “India.Arie replaying in the…
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Very Smart Brothas x Mahogany Books Monthly Book Club: Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor
Since November 2018, VSB has teamed with Mahogany Books, an online and brick-and-mortar, black-owned bookstore located in Washington, D.C., to do a monthly book club. On the first Friday of each month, we meet in the bookstore and discuss the book we read for the month in a very casual, entertaining and often enlightening manner.…
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Dominate
I wanted to believe it didn’t mean anything. The smell of whiskey on his breath. The hurried kiss and his tongue latched around my left nipple. The gentle suckling as my abrasive wool sweater remained bunched against my throat. I told myself it meant nothing and I was nothing but an ends to a means.…