Posted on August 6, 2020 at 2:51 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Imagine how happy you’d be (or have been) to be nominated for an award.
Imagine how happy you’ve been to see a friend in the running for something impressive.
Now imagine both of those events taking place at once.
That’s the situation that debut authors Brandon Taylor and C Pam Zhang find themselves in: both have made the Booker Prize longlist, with novels they wrote while physically together.
Taylor's Real Life is a coming-of-age story about a queer Black student trying to blend in while studying at a Midwestern university and the challenges that threaten his uneasy peace.
Zhang's How Much of These Hills is Gold follows the orphaned children of immigrants who leave a Western mining town in order to bury their father — a risky endeavor.
Taylor and Zhang share their how-we-met story, along with how their literary and cultural experiences shaped their novels, in a new interview that you can read in the Guardian.
Categories: Today in Books