Kiese Laymon

About

Kiese Laymon is the author of the memoir Heavy, which received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and the novel Long Division. A revised edition of his essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, was released in November.

Articles

Issue 91, Winter 2015

Da Art of Storytellin' (A Prequel)

This stank was root and residue of black Southern poverty, and devalued black Southern labor, black Southern excellence, black Southern imagination, and black Southern woman magic. This was the stank...

By Kiese Laymon

Issue 96, Spring 2017

I'm Talking About Revolution

“Own our writing, Kiese Makeba,” she told me. “Own your name. Own our writing. Do you hear me?”

By Kiese Laymon

Issue 105, Summer 2019

Bedtime Songs

By Kiese Laymon

Issue 111, Winter 2020

Da Art of Storytellin' (A Prequel)

By Kiese Laymon

Issue 111, Winter 2020

Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)

The OA gave me space to fall in a different kind of love with Grandmama and OutKast and the possibility of finishing art I started.

By Kiese Laymon

Playlist

Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)

By Kiese Laymon

FREE THE MEMORY

Foreword to a collection of personal narratives by the junior class at New Orleans’s George Washington Carver High School. I’ve read the essays in this book at least ten times each, not because I...

By Kiese Laymon

YOUR TRUTH, YOUR WAY

The truth is, I had no intention of making a life out of writing until I read an article on OutKast by a writer from my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. So when the Oxford American asked...

By Kiese Laymon