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Marlon James

Jamaica (b.1970)

Marlon James graduated from The University of the West Indies in 1991 with a B.A in Literature, and Wilkes University in 2006 with an M.A. in Creative Writing. At Wilkes he was awarded Norman Mailer's Norris Church Mailer Scholarship for Creative Writing. His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Iron Balloons (2006), Bronx Noir (2007) and Silent Voices (2007) for which he received a Pushcart Prize nomination. His non-fiction has appeared in the Caribbean Review of Books.

He has taught at the Calabash International Literary Festival Workshop in Kingston Jamaica for two years. More recently he has taught at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City and was a judge for the PEN Beyond Margins Award.

Awards: LA Times (2019), Booker (2015) see all

Genres: Fantasy, Literary Fiction

Series

Dark Star Trilogy
1. Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019)
2. Moon Witch, Spider King (2022)

Novels

   John Crow's Devil (2005)
   The Book of Night Women (2009)
   A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014)

Books containing stories by Marlon James

Bronx Noir (2007)
(Akashic Noir)
edited by
S J Rozan

Iron Balloons (2006)
Hit Fiction from Jamaica's Calabash Writer's Workshop
edited by
Colin Channer

Awards

	2020 Locus Award for Best Horror Novel : Black Leopard, Red Wolf
	2019 Ray Bradbury Prize : Black Leopard, Red Wolf
	2015 Booker Prize : A Brief History of Seven Killings

Award nominations

	2022 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel (nominee) : Moon Witch, Spider King
	2019 National Book Award for Fiction (shortlist) : Black Leopard, Red Wolf
	2016 Dublin Literary Award (nominee) : A Brief History of Seven Killings
	2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (longlist) : A Brief History of Seven Killings
	2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (nominee) : A Brief History of Seven Killings
	2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (nominee) : The Book of Night Women

Marlon James recommends

Necessary Fiction (2025)
Eloghosa Osunde
"Necessary Fiction's Nigerians are inseparable from Nigeria itself: brazen, willful, sexy, dynamic, explosive. They love hard, fight fierce, and love fiercer. And yet they are forced to the margins of their own society, having to navigate love and happiness under a blanket of fear, danger, and uncertainty. This is where the title becomes gospel, for they need those stories in order to live. When life has risk at every turn, family is chosen, and love is on the edge of the knife, fiction indeed becomes necessary."

Temple Folk (2023)
Aaliyah Bilal
"Temple Folk is a remarkable debut that does many things at once. It opens the door to a people we barely know, yet opens our eyes to the struggles that make us all human. People surprise and they disappoint. They stumble spiritually and soar morally. They love with all they have and lose all they've got. Put between faith and family, duty and self, Temple folk live through all the ties that bind and break."

Promise (2023)
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
"This is a magical, magnificent novel that amounts to a secret history of an America we think we know but never really knew, where girls reckon with the beauty and terror of girlhood, mortal Black bodies reckon with immortal Black souls, while America reckons with the terror of its beastly, bloody self. The result bowls us over with shock and grief, but eventually fills our hearts with awe and wonder."

Ink Blood Sister Scribe (2023)
Emma Törzs
"Follow where this novel leads and you will be lost in a bewitching spell, a book of magic about books of magic, and the people who reel from reading them. Go beyond the magic and you're left with a heartbreaking tale of family where truth blurs with lies, and blood isn't thick enough. A bold, new novel from an extraordinary new voice."

Gone to the Wolves (2023)
John Wray
"In Gone to the Wolves, John Wray delves so deep into rock 'n' roll's heart of darkness that it's a wonder he made it out alive. There's never been a novel like this."

If I Survive You (2022)
Jonathan Escoffery
"Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you've read before."

After the Sun (2021)
Jonas Eika
"Political fictions aren't supposed to be this personal. Satires aren't supposed to be this heartbreaking. Surrealism isn't supposed to be this real. Giving a damn isn't supposed to be this fun. From slights of hand, to shocks to the heart, After the Sun is doing all the things you don't expect it to and leaving a big bold mark in what we call literature."

Sorrowland (2021)
Rivers Solomon
"Sorrowland is a wonderland of fantastical and frightening, magical and real. At the centre of this world and leaping off the page is Vern: unstoppable, unforgettable, and unlike anyone you have ever seen before."

The Committed (2021)
(Sympathizer, book 2)
Viet Thanh Nguyen
"Call The Committed many things. A white hot literary thriller disguised as a searing novel of ideas. An unflinching look at redemption and damnation. An unblinking examination of the dangers of belief, and the need to believe. A sequel that goes toe to toe with the original then surpasses it. A masterwork."

The Prophets (2021)
Robert Jones Jr
"How devastating and glorious this is. Epic in its scale, intimate in its force, and lyrical in its beauty. The Prophets shakes right down to the bone what the American novel is, should do, and can be. That shuffling sound you hear is Morrison, Baldwin, and Angelou whooping and hollering both in pride, and wonder."

Missionaries (2020)
Phil Klay
"If Redeployment was about what happened when we ship wars abroad, then Missionaries is what happens when war comes roaring right back. Expansive, explosive, and epic."

Rainbow Milk (2020)
Paul Mendez
"The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting for. An explosive work that reels from sex, to sin, to salvation all the while grappling with what it means to black, gay, British, a son, a father, a lover, even a man. A remarkable debut."

Sharks in the Time of Saviours (2020)
Kawai Strong Washburn
"The novel you never knew you were waiting for. Old myths clash with new realities, love is in a ride or die with grief, faith rubs hard against magic, and comic flips with tragic so much they meld into something new. All told with daredevil lyricism to burn. A ferocious debut."

Riot Baby (2020)
Tochi Onyebuchi
"Bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power."

Around Harvard Square (2019)
C J Farley
"Wry, sly, and ferociously funny, Around Harvard Square is not just the satire Ivy League college life deserves, but the one it's been waiting for."

The Changeling (2017)
(LaValle Quartet)
Victor LaValle
"A dark fairy tale of New York, full of magic and loss, myth and mystery, love and madness. The Changeling is a mesmerizing, monumental work."

Kintu (2017)
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
"A soaring and sublime epic."

Here Comes the Sun (2016)
Nicole Dennis-Benn
"A debut that stuns at every turn."

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