There are innumerable Black authors that have impacted, influenced, and informed the landscape of literature—Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and many more prolific, important people.

For Black History Month, I want to highlight some Black authors that published their debuts in 2022 and 2023.  

Jackal by Erin E. Adams 10/2022 

A young Black girl goes missing in the woods outside her white Rust Belt town. But she’s not the first-and she may not be the last…  

It’s watching. 

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks (1/2023) 

In Brooks’ YA debut, three prep school students are accused of murdering their high school principal. The boys team up to find the real killer before it’s too late. 

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana (8/2022) 

This collection of short stories follows each tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone’s mind, as they weave in and out of each other’s lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and forge new paths forward. 

Maame by Jessica George (1/2023) 

A young British Ghanaian woman navigates her 20s and finds her place in the world. 

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey (10/2022) 

Rooted in spiritual energy and centered in black liberation, womanism and Afrofuturism, the founder of The Nap Ministry sheds new light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted – and a divine human right. 

Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas (2/2023) 

In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, the author, who found salvation in geek culture, takes readers through the unceasing cruelty of his impoverished childhood toward an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in and build community and love on your own terms. 

-Linnea