March 28, 2022, 12:40pm
Eight months after the launch of Roxane Gay Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic seeking to publish “beautifully written, provocative, intelligent, [risky]” writing, Roxane Gay Books has announced its first list: it will publish three novels in 2023, from Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, J.V. Lyon, and Lindsay Hunter.
Here are the three inaugural titles:
Ani Kayod Somtochukwu’s And Then He Sang a Lullaby, coming June 2023, is the twenty-three-year-old, award-winning writer and queer activist’s debut novel. According to the imprint, the novel is a “passionate love story about two young men who may have too far a distance to bridge to another.”
Professor and art historian J.V. Lyon’s Lush Lives, coming August 2023, is a literary romance; it follows “a headstrong artist, the Harlem brownstone she inherits from an aunt she did not know well, the mysteries it holds, and the intriguing but increasingly complicated connection she has with Parkie de Groot, an ambitious account executive at a New York auction house.”
Novelist and podcaster Lindsay Hunter’s Hot Springs Drive, coming November 2023, unspools “how one woman’s unapologetic choices upend the lives of everyone around her and peels back the fragile veneer of two suburban families and the secrets roiling between them.”
Love story, literary romance, gripping thriller; different styles, but all in line with the RGB brief. Said Gay herself, “I’ve always had eclectic taste in reading and the first slate of titles for Roxane Gay Books reflects that and my love of powerful storytelling, unique narrative voice, and beautiful writing. And all three of these novels embody what I value most in urgent, necessary fiction—they are intelligent and entertaining. I cannot wait to share these stories with the world in 2023.” We can’t wait either!