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• Book Notes: One Black Writer at a Time
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Sunday, August 9, 2026
Black Lit Studies Findings #1
• Of 180 distinct authors who published scholarly books since 2016, 164 (91%) appear only once, while just 5 authors — Robert S. Levine, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Emily Ruth Rutter, Imani Perry, and Tara T. Green — each published three books.
• Since 2016, scholars of African American literature have continued producing important biographical works.
• Scholarly book production does not steadily increase over time; instead, publication totals can fluctuate considerably.
• Contrary to the perception that New York and Northeastern publishers, university presses in the South, including Duke University Press, the University Press of Mississippi, and the University of North Carolina Press, emerged as major producers of scholarly books.
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Black Lit Studies Findings
Saturday, August 1, 2026
Black Novel Findings #2
• 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.
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Black Novel Findings #1
• 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.
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Black Novel Findings
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