A person with shoulder-length dreadlocks, wearing a gray sweater and dark pants, sits against a stone wall. They are smiling slightly and have their hands clasped in front of them.
Literary Arts Institute

Jamel Brinkley Reading and Conversation September 11, 2018

September 11, 2018

Jamel Brinkley is the 2018 Sister Mariella Gable Award-winning author of A Lucky Man (Graywolf Press/A Public Space Books). His fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Short Stories 2018, A Public Space, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, The Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Epiphany, and LitMag. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he was also the 2016,17 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.  (credit: Jamel Brinkley website)

His short story collection, A Lucky Man presents a powerful portrait of black men and boys who have experienced many forms of trauma. These characters struggle to create a stable space for the self while navigating complicated social and familial communities and a world shaped by race, gender, and class.