BOOKS


and colourism. It follows three friends living in London and the cracks that start to appear in their friendship when a “lethally glamorous” figure from their past returns to town.


Moses Mckenzie An Olive Grove in Ends Wildfire, April 2022, £16.99, 9781472283115 The lead hardback launch for Wildfire in spring 2022, An Olive Grove in Ends tells the story of a young Black man living in Bristol, trying to break free of a cycle of murderous violence and drug-dealing to make a better life with the girl he loves.


Forthcoming titles Black Authors’ Preview


Mixon-Webster’s début collection satirises the stereotypes of Black life in America, exploring masculinity, the N-word, and gay Black male expe- rience. Challenging stereo- types through scenes scattered with satire and violence, Mixon-Webster interrogates language and invents new visual and sonic forms.


an exploration of social inequality.


Editor’s Choice


events, If This is Peace is the story of a Black nurse who makes a shocking discovery about two young sisters in her care, and her fight against the systematic sterilisation of women and girls across America. If This is Peace will be published as a lead Phoenix title in the summer of 2022.


Lizzie Damilola Blackburn


Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? Viking, January 2022, £14.99, 9780241504598


Maaza Mengiste Addis Ababa Noir Cassava Republic, 20th July, £12.39, 9781617758201 A collection of crime stories set in Ethiopia’s capital and edited by Booker-shortlisted author Maaza Mengiste, Addis Ababa Noir brings together myth and truth to create something “wholly original—and unsettling”.


Nadifa Mohamed The Fortune Men Viking, 27th May, £14.99, 9780241466940 The story of a murder and a miscarriage of jusice, Mohamed’s “beautifully gripping” novel is based on the true events of the wrongful conviction of Mahmood Mattan in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay in the 1950s.


Kei Miller Things I Have Withheld Canongate, 6th May, £14.99, 9781838852795 A series of provocative and lyrical essays, Things I Have Withheld explores the meaning of silence across a range of topics, including sexuality, iden- tity, race and class.


Natalia Molebatsi Wild Imperfections: A Womanist Anthology of Poems Cassava Republic, 21st Sep, £11.99, 9781913175252 Wild Imperfections is Cassava Republic’s first foray into poetry. With a foreword from Bernardine Evaristo, the collection features poets including Nikki Giovanni, Anni Domingo and Warsan Shire. An “unabashedly” feminist and womanist anthology, the poems are about honouring “the women and the womxn and the womyn who came before us through time”.


Riotously funny and pulsing with the frenetic energy of an African party, Blackburn’s first book follows a 31-year-old British-Nigerian woman living in south London, who sets out, aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend (and many interfering aunties – God love them), to find a date for her cousin’s wedding. Called “modern Austen” by Blackburn’s agent Nelle Andrew, the book employs the classic structure of a woman looking for a husband while under pressure from her family, but sets it in South London with a British-Nigerian, Christian protagonist.


Morgan Omotoye Here is Where Open Pen, 13th May, £5.99, 9781838210618 The latest in short fiction publisher Open Pen’s series of novelettes is Omotoye’s Here is Where, in which the protagonist falls in love with her best friend, and in so doing, discovers that “love is a battlefield”, and to survive she will have to “become something new, something terrible and born of fire”.


Jo Piazza & Christine Pride We Are Not Like Them HQ, 14th October, £14.99, 9780008334567 We Are Not Like Them is the story of a lifelong friendship between two women and what happens after one of their husbands is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. The publisher intends to work closely with Atria, which is publishing in the US on a “truly global” campaign.


Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mukoma’s Unbury Our Dead with Song is about a journalist who follows four talented Ethiopian musicians and uncovers the layered secrets of their lives.


Jason Mott Hell of a Book Orion, 10th Aug, £14.99, 9781398704640 The inventive and dazzling lead release for the Trapeze list for 2021 sees an African-American author set out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. It also features a “possibly” imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.


Jonah Mixon-Webster Stereo(TYPE) Penguin Press, 13th July, £9.99, 9780141996370


46 9th April 2021


Dantiel W Moniz Milk Blood Heat Atlantic, 6th May, £14.99, 978 1838950583 One of the “hottest” US débuts of 2021, accord- ing to the Atlantic, Milk Blood Heat is a collection of stories about race, sex, love, death and the “intimate wonders and violences of the female body”.


Karla Neblett King of Rabbits William Heinemann, out now, £14.99, 9781785152481 In King of Rabbits, Neblett draws on her own upbringing to turn her lived experience into a compelling story about class, race and how our society fails working-class young men.


Chibundu Onuzo Sankofa Little, Brown, 3rd June, £16.99, 9780349013152 Onuzo’s latest is the story of a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew and discovers that he eventually became the president—some might say dictator—of a West African country.


Mukoma Wa Ngugi Unbury Our Dead with Song Cassava Republic, 22nd June, 9781911115984 The son of Kenyan writer


Courrtia Newland A River Called Time Canongate, out now, £16.99, 9781786897060 A speculative fiction story set in an alternate world where slavery and colo- nialism never happened, Newland’s latest novel is


Vanessa Onwuemezi Dark Neighbourhood Fitzcarraldo Editions, 6th October, 9781913097707 Dark Neighbourhood is the “brilliantly inventive” début collection from Vanessa Onwuemezi, winner of the White Review Short Story Prize 2019. The beguilingly creative stories take readers on a “surreal and haunting journey”, from the border of another world, where a line of people wait for the gates to open, to a suburban garden where a man witnesses a murder.


Dolen Perkins-Valdez If This is Peace Phoenix, June 2022, £tbc, ISBN tbc Set in 1970s Alabama and inspired by true


Leone Ross This One Sky Day Faber, 15th April, £16.99, 978-0571358007 This One Sky Day is a love story 15 years in the making from Leone Ross, featuring two lovers who must find their way back to each other before the night falls. According to the publisher, it’s a “sensuous and darkly comic” novel about love, second chances and fate, with “biting postcolonial satire and magical realist playfulness”.


Sam Selvon The Lonely Londoners Penguin Press, 3rd June, £16.99, 9780241504123


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