Danielle Evans

The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history. Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and x-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history--about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight. In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.

A Novella and Stories

The Office of Historical Corrections

A volume of short works includes "Harvest," in which an unplanned pregnancy prompts an African-American college student's self-evaluation; "Jellyfish," in which a father realizes how little he knows his daughter and "Snakes," in which a mixed-race girl recounts a fateful summer with white relatives. A first collection.

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

Office of Historical Corrections

Chaitali Sen

New Race of Men from Heaven

'Fiercely independent, all of Evans’s characters struggle for a place in a world intent of fencing them out.' - New York Times Book Review A college student's unplanned pregnancy forces her to confront her feelings of resentment toward her more privileged classmates. A father’s misguided attempt to rescue a gift for his adult daughter magnifies all he doesn’t know about her. And two teenage girls’ flirt with adulthood leads to disastrous consequences. Based in a world where inequality is reality, but where the shifting terrain of adolescence and family are the most complicating forces, Evans’ characters are wry, wise and utterly original. Striking in their emotional immediacy, the electrifying, prize-winning stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self offer a fresh perspective on race and class in contemporary America. 'Danielle Evans is funny as hell' - Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine 'Knife-sharp wit and tender but unflinching eye' - V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Love Marriage

Carmen Maria Machado

Alice Sola Kim

The essential annual guide to the newest voices in short fiction Every year, PEN America Best Debut Short Stories celebrates twelve outstanding stories by today's most promising new fiction writers and the literary magazines that discovered them. Selections for the third volume of the anthology will be made by three judges, Danielle Evans, Alice Sola Kim, and Carmen Maria Machado. Each story comes with commentary by the editors who first published it, explaining what made them pick it out of the submission pile and why they were moved to share it with readers.

Danielle Evans

About

Books

Join the club