Black Lit Findings #1

• With the releases of Palmares (2021), The Birdcatcher (2022), Butter (2024), and The Unicorn Woman (2025), Gayl Jones has returned to publishing after more than two decades with a remarkable burst of new fiction.

• Of the twenty-seven books awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction between 2000 and 2026, four were written by African American novelists: Edward P. Jones, Colson Whitehead (twice), and Percival Everett.

• From 2016 through 2026, Percival Everett published five novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning James (2024), matching Colson Whitehead’s five-novel output during the decade and placing the two writers on a comparable pace of productivity and major literary recognition.

• 2016  was a big year for novels by emerging Black women novelists and those who had already made a name for themselves on the Black literary scene. That one year saw debut novels in the form of Brit Bennett's The Mothers, Kaitlyn Greenidge's We love You, Charlie Freeman, and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and new arrivals from established novelists represented by Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn and Zadie Smith's Swing Time.

• From 2016 - 2026 at least ten Black women novelists published two new novels of literary fiction each: Brit Bennett, Jesmyn Ward, Zadie Smith, Yaa Gyasi, Jacqueline Woodson, Regina Porter, Helen Oyeyemi, Gayl Jones, and Tayari Jones. The resulting twenty novels, from this group alone contributes to an already robust decade in Black women's literary fiction.

Related:

• Black Lit Findings