When Esinam Bediako submitted the manuscript for her debut novel, “Blood on the Brain,” for consideration for the Ann Petry Award, she didn’t think she’d be in the running for the top prize.
The prize, founded in 2020 by Pasadena-based Red Hen Press and the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance, awards $3,000 to a work of fiction by a Black author. Bediako, whose work was judged by author Deesha Philyaw, did win. The award also comes with another perk: publication of the book by Red Hen.
“I wasn’t really thinking I was going to win it,” Bediako says. “I was just trying to get myself back out there by telling myself, ‘If I set a deadline and submit my work to something, I’m going to get in the habit of doing that.’”
Wa-zha’-zhe, name of the Osage tribe . . . who came from the stars.
—“The Osage and the Invisible World: From the Works of Francis LaFlesche”
The first language
𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 which Eliza,
her grandmother, spoke.
I try to learn
the words 𐓣𐓟
from a book, a dictionary.
In his third poetry collection from Red Hen Press, Kim Stafford gathers poems that sing with empathy, humor, witness, and story. Poems in this book have been set to music, quoted in the New York Times, posted online in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, gathered in a chapbook sold to benefit Ukrainian refugees, posted online in response to Supreme Court decisions, composed for a painter’s gallery opening, and in other ways engaged with a world at war with itself, testifying for the human project hungry for kinship, exiled from bounty, and otherwise thirsting for the oxygen of healing song.
In “Witness,” you allude to the martyr St. Priscilla. Other poems take up women mystics like Hilma af Klint and the other members of De Fem, who practiced mysticism. The tree of knowledge—Yggdrasil in Norse mythology—is also frequently regarded as a feminine figure. For you, how are mysticism or spirituality, gender, and witness connected?
What a wonderful question. In much of this collection, I am thinking about the historical role of women in the church, art, spirituality, and the world at large. In “Witness,” I refer to Santa Priscilla’s catacombs and compare the shape of the orants (the praying figures) in the frescos to the shimmying of the leaves on birch trees. What isn’t exactly mentioned in the poem, but you perhaps intuitively honed in on, is those particular catacombs are filled with images of women participating in various religious activities that are normally performed by men.
I have a little something special to add to the newsletter today! A brief interview with Aliah Wright, author of the recently published Now You Owe Me from Red Hen Press.
1. What is the elevator pitch for Now You Owe Me?
They spent years abducting young women until, one night, they snatched the wrong one …
Twins Ben and Corinthia do everything together, including kidnapping and killing women, but for different reasons that make sense only to them. Racked with guilt and the fear of being caught, they vow to take just one more woman. But when they kidnap Fiona Kessler, they don’t realize they’ll have to contend with her roommate, Amanda Taylor, who is hell bent on finding her best friend. When she does, however, the outcome is disastrous for nearly everyone.
I’ve been reading from outside of Phoenix, where there have been over 120 days of 100 degree temperatures as summer comes to a close. With Hurricane Helene devastating the Southeast and war spreading in the Middle East, the uncertainty about our collective futures—whether it is from climate change, the loss of loved ones, or displacement from our homes and homelands—is so present in the fifteen books on this list. Yet, there is also joy: beautiful meals, familial and romantic love, the power of finding one’s voice. Small presses expand the bounds of literature to create a diverse and more inclusive landscape that reminds us that even when it feels like things are falling apart, there is always room for hope.
Today I talked to Esinam Bediako about here novel Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024).
When Akosua, a 24-year-old grad student in New York, falls and bangs her head, she has too much drama in her life to pay attention to her headaches and exhaustion. She’s just broken up with Wisdom, her boyfriend, she learns that her long-estranged Ghanian father is in New York, and she’s worried that dropping so many graduate classes means that she’ll lose her scholarship and work-study job in the library (where she met Daniel, her new crush). As she grapples with her Ghanian-American identity, her mother’s wishes for her, her troubled relationship with the father who left when she was a child, and her coursework, Akosua’s head injury worsens, and she wakes up in the hospital, forced to confront her own history, memory, dreams, and desires.
Living Writers: Peggy Shumaker Expands Human Perception in ‘Cairn: New and Selected Poems’
Olivia Miller, Assistant Arts & Features Editor • October 4, 2024
Peggy Shumaker, the most recent author featured in Colgate University’s Living Writers series, is especially close to home for organizer of Living Writers and Professor of English Jennifer Brice — in fact, Brice studied under Shumaker while pursuing her MFA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Akoto applied the Page 69 Test to his debut novel, Blindspot in America, and reported the following:
Page 69 in Blindspot in America is an essential part of the plot, a turning point in the story. The few dialogue lines on page 69 continue a conversation on the previous page, where Lindsey had just declared her feelings for Kamao after desperately waiting for him to make the first move for quite a long time. In those few dialogue lines on page 69, she is begging Kamao to say something in response to her declaration of love, and the latter is stoic, not knowing how to respond.
Blindspot in America gives a provocative depiction of some of the realities immigrants face in the United States—racism and discrimination—but also their hopes and faith in a country that promises freedom and opportunity to all.
Q: What inspired you to write Blindspot in America, and how did you create your character Kamao?
A: I wanted to write a story that explores different immigrants’ viewpoints and experiences of the American Dream.
After living in the United States for nearly 20 years, I realized that prospective immigrants are profoundly unaware of many things until they have relocated to the US. But regardless of the many struggles they face, there’s still hope and endless opportunity for everyone in this country.
A Mighty Blaze (Online) included the book in their October 1st roundup for New Release Tuesday!
Five Authors Who Influenced me as a Reader and as a Writer
by Elom K. Akoto | Oct 1, 2024 | Features, Five Things
My teenage years were characterized by three activities: school, soccer, and reading. I was drawn to literature by my sixth-grade French teacher, who I believe had a calling for teaching. I always enjoyed watching him speak passionately about books and writers. I became a big fan of books in his class and an avid reader afterward.
Favorite non-reading activity?
Besides writing, I like watching and playing soccer. It’s a popular game in my home country of Togo (West Africa), and I’ve been playing it since I was a child.
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
