PEN Out Loud: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Isaac Fitzgerald

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Join Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah—whose best-selling short story collection, Friday Black, Roxane Gay calls “captivating and essential”—to discuss writing in the hinterlands of satire, where absurdity reflects and challenges reality. A celebrated debut author, Adjei-Brenyah breaks new ground with Friday Black, creating an electrifying vision of the future of fiction, and will be joined in conversation by Isaac Fitzgerald, author and co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times best-selling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Esquire, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees.

Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award). He is the author of three books forthcoming from Bloomsbury: a YA novel, a picture book, and an essay collection titled Dirtbag, Massachusetts. Photo credit: John Midgley.