[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Friday, June 12, 2026
The Consistency of Walter Mosley
By Elizabeth Cali
Walter Mosley is consistent. Search the Navigator Device for 21st-century novels, and it is impossible to overlook how frequently Mosley’s name comes up. I wondered, just in 21st century novel publications, how consistently Mosley published across the first two decades of this century. Did he have a strong entry into the new century and perhaps did his productivity wane some in the 2010s, or vice versa?
Thirty of Walter Mosley’s 21st-century novels were published in the 2000s and 2010s. It is striking that his novelistic output in the 2000s is equal to his novelistic output in the 2010s. 15 novels published in each of the first two decades of the 21st century.
Mosley stands out in part due to the significant number of novels he has published, but the consistency, the even-ness with which he has published in the first two decades of this century prompts further consideration. We might consider how many of those novels are part of the Easy Rawlins series or the Leonid McGill series, for which Mosley is known. Does authoring a series lend itself to greater productivity, for example? What about the novels that are not part of a series? Do these lead to significant departures in topics, themes, genre, or plot?
Such significant and consistent output allows readers to ask more pointed questions about the layers of both consistency and variation in theme, genre, protagonists, settings, and structure that take place within and across such a steady, remarkable output of imaginative writing. And, notably, the rarity in having such a volume of regular creative production from one author is that that when readers ask questions about Mosely’s storytelling and fiction writing patterns, trends, variations, and creative flights, they’ll have significant data to back up their answers.
Thirty of Walter Mosley’s 21st-century novels were published in the 2000s and 2010s. It is striking that his novelistic output in the 2000s is equal to his novelistic output in the 2010s. 15 novels published in each of the first two decades of the 21st century.
Mosley stands out in part due to the significant number of novels he has published, but the consistency, the even-ness with which he has published in the first two decades of this century prompts further consideration. We might consider how many of those novels are part of the Easy Rawlins series or the Leonid McGill series, for which Mosley is known. Does authoring a series lend itself to greater productivity, for example? What about the novels that are not part of a series? Do these lead to significant departures in topics, themes, genre, or plot?
Such significant and consistent output allows readers to ask more pointed questions about the layers of both consistency and variation in theme, genre, protagonists, settings, and structure that take place within and across such a steady, remarkable output of imaginative writing. And, notably, the rarity in having such a volume of regular creative production from one author is that that when readers ask questions about Mosely’s storytelling and fiction writing patterns, trends, variations, and creative flights, they’ll have significant data to back up their answers.
Related:
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Mapping the Remarkable Literary Career of Elizabeth Alexander
Representing her productivity this way highlights the number of works she has produced and points to the breadth and continuity of her contributions across more than three decades. Rather than presenting a bibliography as a simple list, a visual map like this helps us see patterns of literary production.
Related:
Monday, June 1, 2026
Blogging about Poetry in May 2026
[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]
• May 1: Blogging about Poetry in April 2026
Thursday, May 21, 2026
What ProQuest Reveals About Black Poetry Scholarship
From 2000–2025, we can notice significant disparities in scholarly attention among Black poets.
That’s what I noticed when I used ProQuest to tally MA theses and dissertations on several notable Black poets. Here are the numbers of appearances the poets made in those documents:
Langston Hughes — 3,009
Amiri Baraka — 1,335
Claude McKay — 920
Gwendolyn Brooks — 766
Paul Laurence Dunbar — 664
June Jordan — 468
Nikki Giovanni — 459
Sonia Sanchez — 380
Rita Dove — 298 Lucille Clifton — 291
Robert Hayden — 224
As you can see, Langston Hughes, and then Baraka and McKay, exist in categories well above everyone else.
To the extent that Dove, Clifton, and Hayden are among our most widely known and frequently cited Black poets, the numbers also give a sense that dozens of other African American poets likely register much lower on the citation scale. Those of us who study poetry are not especially surprised, because we have long known that many poets receive comparatively limited scholarly engagement.
Still, I appreciate that ProQuest makes it possible to get a quantitative sense of things, including the striking variances among well-known Black poets.
Charting the appearances of Black writers in ProQuest gives me sturdier ground for considering where scholarship is, and is not, moving in the future. If these are the poets that advanced graduate students are focusing on, the numbers serve as a slight preview of the field’s ongoing directions.
Related:
Friday, May 15, 2026
The Variety of 21st-Century Black Middle Grade Fiction
By Jeremiah Carter
Middle grade novels are an interesting subset of 21st-century Black fiction, representing a substantial and varied body within the dataset.
Type “middle grade” in the search bar for the Navigator, then select “Novel” for Reading Form and “21st century” for Period of Publication. The results are notably varied, including urban narratives, sports stories, science fiction, Black girlhood and boyhood narratives, friend-group adventures, magical realism, LGBTQ+ themes, nature-centered stories, and more. The results indicate that middle grade Black fiction encompasses a wide range of genres, themes, and reading experiences rather than functioning as a narrow literary category.
This pattern suggests that middle grade fiction serves as an important and diverse entry point into contemporary Black literary culture for younger readers. It also indicates that Black middle grade fiction provides space for exploring identity, friendship, imagination, family, and social life across multiple narrative forms and genres.
Type “middle grade” in the search bar for the Navigator, then select “Novel” for Reading Form and “21st century” for Period of Publication. The results are notably varied, including urban narratives, sports stories, science fiction, Black girlhood and boyhood narratives, friend-group adventures, magical realism, LGBTQ+ themes, nature-centered stories, and more. The results indicate that middle grade Black fiction encompasses a wide range of genres, themes, and reading experiences rather than functioning as a narrow literary category.
This pattern suggests that middle grade fiction serves as an important and diverse entry point into contemporary Black literary culture for younger readers. It also indicates that Black middle grade fiction provides space for exploring identity, friendship, imagination, family, and social life across multiple narrative forms and genres.
Related:
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Comic Book Shop as Source of Materials for Writing Black Panther
In many respects, a single comic book shop stands out as the central source of the primary materials that became my book Writing Black Panther: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Representation Struggles.
Like clockwork during Coates's run, I was there to pick up my copy of Black Panther. When variants appeared, I grabbed those as well. I first heard about one of my favorite alternative covers for Black Panther when visiting Heroic Adventures. I eventually went on to collect all the Black Panther variants, which remains amusing to me because I distinctly remember visiting the shop during the summer of 2012 and feeling baffled as customers scrambled to grab variants for The Walking Dead #100.
In December 2018, I began drafting a table of contents for what would eventually become Writing Black Panther. Initially, I planned to write more broadly about diversity in comic books. Over time, however, I decided to focus specifically on Coates and Black Panther while still engaging larger questions concerning representation, politics, readership, and the evolving culture of comics.
Over the years, Heroic Adventures became more than a comic shop for me and became part of the routine, conversations, and collecting culture that helped shape Writing Black Panther.
Related:
A Notebook on Heroic Adventures
Here's a roundup of posts on Heroic Adventures, the comics shop in Edwardsville where I've purchased comic books for more than a decade now.
2026
2019
• August 9: Visiting Heroic Adventures
2016
• July 18: Black Panther #1 negative space variant cover
2015
• March 28: Heroic Adventures and the SIUE/East St. Louis Charter School
2013
• April 10: Another Wednesday at Heroic Adventures
• April 4: Comic book store leaps tall building, helps out literature teacher
• February 6: Black Studies, Comic Books & Future Histories
2012
• October 11: Weekly Visits to Heroic Adventures Comic Bookstore
Related:
• A Notebook on Comic Books
• July 18: Black Panther #1 negative space variant cover
2015
• March 28: Heroic Adventures and the SIUE/East St. Louis Charter School
2013
• April 10: Another Wednesday at Heroic Adventures
• April 4: Comic book store leaps tall building, helps out literature teacher
• February 6: Black Studies, Comic Books & Future Histories
2012
• October 11: Weekly Visits to Heroic Adventures Comic Bookstore
Related:
• A Notebook on Comic Books
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