A 2011 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Rides. The Rides had involved courageous young Americans traveling by bus to the Deep South in order to protest racism and fight for equality. Oprah gathered 178 of the living riders, plus other guests. These other guests included a former…
“WAKE – The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts” by Rebecca Hall, illustrated by Hugo Martínez – review
I desperately wanted to like this book. The title is great, the cover is stunning, and the topic is perfect for Black History Month. What’s more, I like graphic novels and history and I love learning about slave revolts. But the book didn’t quite do it for me. For one thing, the title is misleading….
Nazaré wins New Mexico-Arizona Book Award
Nazaré: a novel has won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Literary Fiction. It was a joint winner alongside Brandon Hobson’s superb The Removed. Back in 2021, I invited Brandon to speak at Southwest Word Fiesta; he was brilliant. Among the other winners was First & Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100 (Torrey House Press),…
Banned Books Week 2022
Two-hundred years before Christ, the Chinese emperor, Shih Huang Ti, summoned 460 writers to his palace and put them on trial. They were all found guilty and buried alive. Then the emperor gathered one copy of every book that existed and stored it in the Imperial Library and had all other manuscripts destroyed. From then…
“Nazaré” nominated for Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
I’m thrilled to announce that Nazaré has made it onto the shortlist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. The book is in extremely good company, with several authors whose work I admire, especially Ladee Hubbard and the protean Percival Everett. A list of previous winners of the award reads like a who’s who of…
Review of “Life of Che: An Impressionistic Biography”
The story of this book is almost as extraordinary as the story of Che Guevara’s life. As told in the afterword by Pablo Turnes, Vida del Che was first published in January 1969, two years after Guevara’s death, by Argentinian publisher Jorge Álvarez. At the time, Argentina was ruled by a military junta, so publishing…
Nazaré wins Foreword INDIES book award
The Foreword INDIES awards recognize the best books published in 2021 from small, independent, and university presses. For this year’s competition, over 2,700 entries were submitted in 55 categories, with Foreword’s editors choosing the finalists. Those titles were then mailed to librarians and booksellers charged with picking the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mention winners,…
“First and Wildest” anthology out now!
First and Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100 (Torrey House Press, edited by Elizabeth Hightower Allen) is out. This anthology celebrates one of the largest wilderness areas in the U.S., a place of stunning natural beauty that I happen to call home (well, very close to home). According to Foreword Reviews, the anthology “melds lush…
Tucson Festival of Books 2022 – once again a weekend of wise words
The Tucson Festival of Books is the third largest book festival in the U.S. On March 12 and 13, 2022, I participated in two panels at the festival, one with the short story writer Daniel A. Olivas and another with fiction writer Sequoia Nagamatsu. I also managed to see a few sessions, the highlight for…
“Nazaré” reviewed in World Literature Today
Yang Yiyi, from Nanjing Normal University, reviewing in “World Literature Today,” had this to say about Nazaré: NAZARÉ IS AN incantation, an allegory, and a prophecy. With imaginative and ornate linguistic skills, and a brutal naturalism veiled by a fairy-tale opening and the spinning of mythical plots, Wilson creates for us a world of turmoil…
2021 A Year in Books – my highlights
Fiction: The Removed by Brandon Hobson This excellent novel follows the (mis)fortunes of a Native American family whose son was killed years earlier by a police officer. The book is full of the pain that stems from this tragic event and from ancestral trauma, namely the Trail of Tears. Multiple narrators in varying states of…
“Gila Lost and Found: Search and Rescue in New Mexico” by Marc Levesque
Gila Lost and Found recounts the author’s experiences as a Search and Rescue (SAR) field coordinator in the Gila Wilderness. It’s part a “how to survive” and part an adventure book, although some parts read like entry attempts for the Darwin Awards – an annual prize given posthumously to those who die the stupidest, most…
JJ Amaworo Wilson, author 