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.
Genres: Fantasy, Literary Fiction
Novels
Awards
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Marlon James recommends

Into the Sun (2016)
Deni Ellis Béchard
"Bechard is the rare writer who knows the secret to telling the true story."

The Changeling (2017)
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."

So Many Islands (2017)
Nicholas Laughlin
"Here are stories that don't shatter taboos so much as ignore them in the first place."

Cut Guavas (2018)
Robert Antoni
"Antoni isn't writing literature with Cut Guuavas. He's cutting it open, sinking under the skin, pumping new blood into the veins, and shaping it into unimaginable forms."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."
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