Jesmimi: August 2012

Revision is kicking my ass, and this song is helping me through the rough spots. It's an elixir of a few of my favorite things: Andre 3000 and Frank Ocean (artistic Southern boys), haunting melodies, allusions to space, sex, and an esoteric, violent sensei who must be Pai Mei. Enjoy.

What I've Been Working on in my Lonely Rooms (or we got it for cheap)

My second novel, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury) is available now. The novel follows a teenage girl, Esch, and her family during the ten days preceding Hurricane Katrina and during the immediate aftermath of the storm. Here in these Mississippi coastal backwoods, there are motherless children, beautiful pit bulls, lost girls, boys who ride bikes without seats, fights in basketball gyms, births, deaths, and more. Sit with me on the lip of this ditch. Come on: let me tell you a story.

Salvage the Bones won the National Book Award and the ALEX Award, is a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Fiction, and was a finalist for the Young Lions Award.

My debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds (Agate Bolden) is available now on Amazon.com, or you can find it at your local bookstore. Essence magazine chose the novel to be an Essence Magazine Book Club Selection, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association chose it as a 2009 Honor Award recipient. It was also an honorable mention for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Fiction, and a finalist for the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Award.

I have a small essay titled "Obama I: Blood Dread and Hope" in issue number 64, which is on Race, of The Oxford American literary magazine. I also had an essay called "We Do Not Swim in Our Cemeteries" published in issue number 62 about Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the storm.

I've also published stories, essays, and excerpts in BOMB magazine (check them out at www.bombsite.com--I love them), A Public Space (check them out at www.apublicspace.org--I adore them), Electric Literature (check them out at electricliterature.com--they're awesome), and Oxford American (check them out at www.oxfordamerican.org--they're the business).

I'm a former Stegner Fellow (Stanford University). I was the Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. Now I'm an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.

If you're into wasting hours reading inane, sometimes funny banter, you can find me on twitter under the username: jesmimi.

Jesmimi

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

pink matter

Me in a Book

What I've Been Working on in my Lonely Rooms (or we got it for cheap)

You'll Like It, Mikey (or some links)

Cake for my Brain (or what I'm reading or have read recently)

Sonically Challenged (or what I'm listening to)

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