Black Lit Findings #2

• Walter Mosley has maintained remarkable consistency by publishing exactly 15 novels in each of the first two decades of the 21st century, producing 30 novels over twenty years.

• Between 2016 and 2026, Brit Bennett emerged as one of the decade’s most visible new African American novelists; The Mothers (2016) and The Vanishing Half (2020) both became New York Times bestsellers, and The Vanishing Half debuted at No. 1, was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and longlisted for the National Book Award.

• 2016-2026 is the first ten-year period since before 1970 that Toni Morrison did not publish a new novel. 2015 marked her last fiction publication, with the short story "Sweetness" excerpted from the novel God Help the Child published the same year, prior to her passing in August 2019.

• Zora Neale Hurston, one of the foremost authors in African American literary studies has now posthumously published two literary works this decade (2016-2026): Barracoon and The Life of Herod the Great.

• Richard Wright's The Man Who Lived Underground was published as a novel in 2021.

Related:

• Black Lit Findings