My first book, Unexplained Presence , is now available from Leon Works!
Please go get you one!Unexplained Presence is a collection of hybrid essays that remix stories from novels, paintings and films to zoom in on the black presences within them, and explore the continuum of racialized narratives within Eurocentric art. Moving from interrogations of Francois Ozon's 8 Femmes and Virginia Woolf's Orlando, to the machinations of the Regency House Party reality TV show, Unexplained Presence weaves threads of myth, fact and fiction into previously unexplored narratives lurking in our collective imagination.
I'm thrilled to have cover art by Wura-Natasha Ogunji . Her piece is the perfect visual conception of my words, right down to the process: stitching colored threads, using solid and broken lines, through layers of transparent tissue paper.
I also have a chapbook, Tzimmes, a prose poem published in 2000 by A+Bend Press.
Tzimmes (pronounced "sim-mess" or "sim-meez") is a Yiddish word meaning either 'casserole,' or 'to make a big deal about nothing.' The book connects Barbados genealogy research, breast cancer, the films of Yvonne Rainer, and a potluck Passover seder, and riffs off of the definitions for tzimmes.
I co-edit and publish The Encyclopedia Project , a series of five hardcover annual publications, the first of which is Encyclopedia Vol. 1 A-E.
Each book in The Encyclopedia Project is laid out like a reference book (complete with cross-referencing!), reads like a literary journal, and includes a color art portfolio of the caliber found in artists catalogues, all with the aim of exploring narrative possibilities, and expanding literary community. We're working hard on producing Vol. 2 F-K at this very moment.