Tope Folarin
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A Particular Kind of Black Man Short Stories
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Tope Folarin

A Family Story About Colonialism and Its Aftereffects
THE ATLANTIC

To tell a story is to place a frame around wayward events. The storyteller points to scenes unfolding within the frame and says, This is important. The implication is that what transpires beyond those borders is less consequential, or not so at all.

Celestial Bodies
THE NATION

In the wake of Bill Clinton’s presidential victory in 1992, a new genre of media—spanning literature, cinema, and television—emerged that sought to capture the energy of his campaign, the hope his election engendered, and the inevitable clash between the poetry of campaigning and the prose of governance.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Unpacks Black Literature’s ‘Black Box’
New york times

By way of explaining the metaphor that serves as the title of his latest book, “The Black Box,” the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. transcribes a conversation he had with his son-in-law after the birth of his granddaughter 10 years ago:

WRITING ABOUT YOURSELF ISN’T INHERENTLY SELFISH
The Atlantic

In 2015, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist J. M. Coetzee published a book called The Good Story that he co-authored with a clinical psychologist named Arabella Kurtz. The book is essentially a conversation between Coetzee and Kurtz about the origins and social function of storytelling.

A Redacted Past Slowly Emerges
The atlantic

This year’s winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, Justin Torres’s Blackouts is a complex story about recovering the history of erased and ignored gay lives.

The years-long search for an enslaved author’s true identity
THE WASHINGTON POST

Gregg Hecimovich’s quest to identify the writer of ‘The Bondwoman’s Narrative’ is an inspired amalgam of genres: part thriller, part mystery and part biography.

teju cole and the forking paths of autofiction
The nation

In May, after months of negotiations, the Writers Guild of America announced a strike against the major Hollywood studios. Among the issues that the writers are concerned with is how artificial intelligence….

Colson Whitehead Loses the Plot
The atlantic

For the past three years, I have taught creative-writing courses at Georgetown University, and in that time, I have come to accept something I initially found strange…

 

A Novel in Which Nightmares Are All Too Real
The atlantic

In 1976, the Argentine armed forces staged a coup against the president of Argentina, Isabel Perón. In short order, the military installed a junta that suspended political parties and various government functions, aggressively pursued free-market policies…

A WORLD WHERE DEATH ISN’T THE ENd
The atlantic

Perhaps the most painful moment following the death of a loved one is the split second after you reflexively pick up your phone to give them a call, or the instant after you tuck away an anecdote to share the next time you see them.

An Opportunity to Act
tHE DRIFT

Two new literary genres emerged during the opening weeks of the pandemic. The first, the pandemic journal, proliferated almost as quickly as the virus that kept millions of us locked inside;

THE AMBITIOUS AND OVERSTUFFED WORLD OF HANYA YANAGIHARA
THE NATION

Contemporary novelists have adopted an intriguing strategy to counteract the waning cultural interest in literary fiction: They depict what a camera can’t—or won’t.

 

THE QUAKE
KULTURAUSTAUSCH

Ten years ago I was sitting on my couch and thumbing through a novel when I felt it shift beneath me. For a moment I thought I’d somehow moved the couch even though I’d been lying perfectly still.

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IS THERE REALLY FREEDOM IN THE OUTDOORS?
HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

About three months into the pandemic, I found myself standing at the window of my condo near downtown Washington, D.C., cradling my newborn. Outside, the sun was rising.

Masters of Reality
The Baffler

One of the immediate casualties of Trump’s rise to power, or so we were constantly told, was the truth. Scores of pundits appeared on television and discussed Trump’s habit of obscuring or ignoring the truth altogether.

Can a Black Novelist Write Autofiction?
The New Republic

Quick: What names come to mind when you hear the term “autofiction”? Let me guess, you’re probably thinking about Rachel Cusk, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ben Lerner, and Sheila Heti, among a few others.

 

If we want a vital, creative society, we need universal dental care, too
the Washington post

At night, my gums swelled, always soon after dinner. I knew something was wrong with my teeth, but at the age of 27, I didn’t have dental insurance.

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Wrestling With Prejudice in Three Debut Novels
The New York times book review

At one point in Staples’s “This Town Sleeps,” the 20-something narrator, Marion Lafournier, recalls: “When I was in middle school Ojibwe class, I first learned the concept of having an Indian name. Or spirit name.

TOPE FOLARIN ON THE MISGUIDED URGE TO CARVE THE WORLD INTO BINARIES
LITERARY HUB

When I was about six years old my father told me a fantastic, utterly incredible story. He said that when he was about six, maybe a bit older, he ventured into a small stand of woods…

AN ARCHITECT OF DREAMS
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

A matatu, or taxi van, is traveling from the big city to a much smaller one. There are six people inside. They have known each other for just a few hours, but now they are something like family.

Nigerian-American Author Tope Folarin Reflects on Donald Trump's Election Victory
BBC RADIO

Donald Trump’s election victory has prompted many Americans to reflect on what his presidency will mean for them.

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The First National Museum of African American History
BBC Radio

The first National Museum of African American History has opened in Washington, more than 100 years after it was first proposed. Writer Tope Folarin visits the museum and reflects on its impact.

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Against Accessibility
Los angeles review of books

I didn’t know much about Robert Irwin’s work when I wandered into the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden a few weeks ago.

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Genesis
BBC Radio

Each of the 5 shortlisted authors for Caine Prize for African Writing share their stories and perspectives from America via Nigeria, Somalia & Kenya, Zimbabwe & South Africa.

 
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Oscar Diversity and Fiction in Times of Crisis
BBC RADIO

On the eve of the Oscars, the Caine Prize-winning writer Tope Folarin reflects on the debate the #OscarsSoWhite movement has sparked, and how it applies to writers too.

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To Be Where We Are
Transition Magazine

What does it mean if I say to you that creation is working on itself inside me? Well, it means that I am made up of the stuff of the universe, like everyone else.