Jamel Brinkley Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Jamel Brinkley
Photo: Arash Saedinia

Jamel Brinkley

Jamel Brinkley Biography

Jamel Brinkley is the author of Witness: Stories, published in August 2023 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US)/4th Estate (UK), and A Lucky Man: Stories (2018, Graywolf Press), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, The Yale Review, Guernica, The Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, Glimmer Train, The Believer, and Tin House, and has been anthologized twice in The Best American Short Stories. His work has also received support from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Lannan Foundation. He was a Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and has received an O. Henry Award and the Rome Prize. Raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, he teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Jamel Brinkley's website

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Interview

The author discusses his short story collection, Witness

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Books by this Author

Books by Jamel Brinkley at BookBrowse
Witness jacket A Lucky Man jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Jamel Brinkley but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Nancy Au

    Nancy Au

    Nancy Au is a genderqueer, bisexual artist and teacher living in Oakland, California. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in anthropology, and has an MFA from San Francisco State University where she teaches ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    A Lucky Man

    Try:
    Spider Love Song and Other Stories
    by Nancy Au

  • Paul Beatty

    Paul Beatty

    Paul Beatty is the author of four novels—Slumberland, Tuff, The White Boy Shuffle and The Sellout (winner of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Man Booker Prize)—and two books of poetry: Big ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Witness

    Try:
    The Sellout
    by Paul Beatty

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