Black Authors & Stories

Last Updated: March 2, 2024

The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump

The New Naturals
by Gabriel Bump

After losing her child and seeing the world as an increasingly dangerous place, a young Black woman from Boston decides to construct a separate society at an abandoned restaurant in Western Massachusetts. She locates a benefactor and soon it all begins to take shape, but it doesn’t take long for problems to develop.

Rebecca, Not Becky by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene

Rebecca, Not Becky
by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene

Struggling to adjust to the upper-crust white suburb of Rolling Hills, Virginia, De’Andrea Whitman is challenged by her therapist to make a white girlfriend and finds one in Rebecca Myland as they are brought together to fight back against the community’s rising racial sentiments.

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Let Us Descend
by Jesmyn Ward

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take.

Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams

A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers.

The Secret to a Southern Wedding by Synithia Williams

The Secret to a Southern Wedding
by Synithia Williams

It’s been years since Dr. Imani Kemp has returned home to Peachtree Cove, Georgia. When her mom announces she’s marrying a man she just met on a dating app, Imani knows she has to put a stop to it immediately. She just never expected sparks to fly with the groom’s son.

Pomegranate by Helen Elaine Lee

Pomegranate
by Helen Elaine Lee

Ranita Atwater is wrapping up her four-year sentence for opioid possession at Oak Hills Correctional Center, near Boston. With three years of sobriety, she is determined to stay clean and regain custody of her two children from her aunts who have been raising them. My name is Ranita, and I’m an addict, she has said again and again at [Narcotics Anonymous] meetings. But who else is she? Who might she choose to become?