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| photo: Johnny Lee Chapman III | |
Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. His poetry and essays have been published in the New York Times Magazine, POETRY, the Atlantic and Vibe. Randall's first book, Refuse, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He was also a contributor to the anthology Black Boy Joy. His debut novel, Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa (Holt BYR, $16.99), is the first in a planned duology featuring 12-year-old Pilar, who is transported to Zafa, an island where Dominican myths and legends come to life.
On your nightstand now:
Luster by Raven Leilani
Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia
Come Clean by Joshua Nguyen
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Beyond the clarity of voice and the majesty of the prose, I don't know that any book (series) has been more crucial to ya boi becoming an author. The Golden Compass arrived at a huge turning point in my life where I was constantly considering the What If--the alternate universe. I'd lived enough life to have a frame of reference for how small choices became large events. Pullman gave me an abundance of worlds, and it was part of the map for how I began making my own.
Your top five authors:
This morning it's Jason Reynolds, Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jesmyn Ward, Hanif Abdurraqib. But realistically, anyone whose been on the phone with me knows I make endless smaller and more specific top fives and Imma tell you about them, for hours if left unchecked.
Book you've faked reading:
Real talk, Pride and Prejudice is exceedingly boring, but I wasn't about to lose my participation credit for AP Lit, so... I had a choice to make.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. There are some books that gift you the privilege of always remembering exactly where you were when you read it for the first time. And at the mention of that book, it is instantly 2018 again and I'm sitting on the floor one sock on, one off, reading Jason's magic into the air, all 300 pages in one sitting.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Aight, this one's kind of a stretch because I didn't buy it that day but, the answer is The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. The cover was so utterly striking, and the title dragged me in immediately. It's the third in a series that I adored (and I'm hoping we get the next one soon because I've been sitting with that cliffhanger for half a decade), and I began the series so that I could finally own that book and know who this republic allegedly was. It didn't disappoint!
Book you hid from your parents:
None, my parents were a very low-censorship type of family. If ever there was a book hidden it's because I was supposed to be focused on the standardized tests. But the fourth grade made the mistake of telling us we could read freely if we finished early. I never saw my scores, but I was mid-way through book five of Deltora Quest and filling in every other bubble at random, so I'm sure they were remarkably bad.
Book that changed your life:
Notes from the Divided Country by Suji Kwock Kim, pound for pound one of the best first books I've ever read. Masterclass of imagery, I get at least one unexpected poem a year out of sitting with it.
Favorite line from a book:
"Husband, what was he but a word I loved?" --Lyrae Van-Cleif Stefanon [from the poem "RR Lyrae: Matter"]
Five books you'll never part with:
I have a signed first edition of Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward--ain't nothing parting me from that book. I'm very protective of my copy of [insert] boy by Danez Smith, ditto for my copy of Wild Hundreds by Nate Marshall. My copies of A Story, A Story by Gail E. Haley and The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton are books I hope will be in my family for as many generations as we have a planet.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Sula by Toni Morrison.