a Kimbilio Fellow and an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow and is the recipient of two Hopwood Awards, among other prizes. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares and the South Carolina Review. She worked in publicity at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and is now a senior publicist at Dutton, Plume, and Tiny Reparations Books. Originally from St. Louis, she lives in Brooklyn.
Morrow's new novel is Little Movements.
At Lit Hub she tagged eight books that "explore performance in various ways—its power and pressures—beautifully exposing the talent and vulnerability of the characters, and turning the reader into an audience member, eager to give a standing ovation." One title on the list:
Percival Everett, ErasureRead about the other books on Morrow's list at Lit Hub.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an academic who forces himself into the performance of a lifetime when he writes (and sells for an obscene amount) My Pafology, later retitled Fuck, a book that exploits nearly every Black stereotype. He then must conceal his intellectual identity in order to present as someone who wrote such a book, contriving a new voice and a tragic “street life” backstory under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh (it’s worth looking into the folklore of Stagger Lee). Shockingly, 50 pages of Erasure are My Pafology, appearing midway through and testing the fictional publisher and the real-time reader. This is next-level performance as Everett forces readers to engage with some of the most offensive writing they’ve likely ever read before pulling back out to the central narrative. It’s shocking, and provocative, and genius.
Erasure is among Heidi Julavits's five top books on missing persons and absent figures.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
