Lovers & Friends,
Yo! It’s KB. School started on the 22nd and I’ve been BUSY for the last couple of weeks. I keep my promises, though. Last month, I said I would try out some podcast stuff with y’all and I’m DOIN IT, baby. But first, some (exciting) updates.
As of mid-August, over 1,000 copies of “How To Identify Yourself With a Wound” have been sold. Non-writerly friends: this is huge!!! Selling a book in the age of social media AND in the midst of an unpredictable pandemic means I had to literally do turns and tricks — in the form of social media campaigns, a 30+ stop tour, and LOTS of emails — to get people’s attention long enough for them to get a book. And we did it!!! If you bought a copy, came to an event, or reposted/liked/shared any of my posts, THANK YOU. Seriously. It means the world to me that this many copies of my first book are out living their own lives across the country (and the world? Someone in Germany told me they had one recently :D)
Speaking of big news, I have some more. I wrote a nonfiction book (!!!) and it’s now under contract with Alfred A. Knopf (!!!) and has a tentative release of 2024 (!!!). Everyone: this is also huge !!!!! When I sought to (finally) start writing nonfiction last year, I could not have imagined that a) I would actually finish a book about Black transmasculinity, and b) that Erroll McDonald — a legendary editor who’s worked with the likes of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin (!!!) — would like my work enough to wanna publish it !!!!! ah !!!!! Read the official release statement in Publisher’s Marketplace (!!!) here. More information on this soon.
One thing that I did not expect upon starting my medical transition is that medical professionals would be so…… incompetent. There are many challenges associated with being Black, trans, and in Texas (see my thoughts on that here), and because of this, I’ve made this subject area one of large interest to me as a writer. Recently, Healthline gave me the opportunity to share a couple of ways folks in the medical field can create better environments for folks like me. Read this here.
As I get deeper and deeper into literary publishing, I realize that there’s no rulebook for the ways writers should and shouldn’t exist. Who is allowed to tell a story? What agency does the subject (if a real person) have in the telling of said story? How truthful is too truthful when discussing family drama? These are all questions I’m interested in. Night Coffee Lit let me talk about one of my favorite subjects (ethics) and you can read all about it here.
So….. were you alive in the early 2000s? If so, you probably remember this song called Handlebars by Flobots. I think about this song more than I’d like to admit, especially when I was crafting my book FREEDOM HOUSE (out in 2023). One day, while thinking also about forgiveness, I wrote a poem about this song. You can read it in Cobra Milk magazine here.
I’ve been doing such BEAUTIFUL interviews with the likes of the Chicago Review of Books, Sightlines Magazine, and more. Check out all my recent convos and reviews here.
Please ask your local public library, bookstore, university, college, book club, or political education group to please carry my debut poetry book, “How To Identify Yourself With a Wound”. It would mean the world to me! The ISBN is 978-1-952224-13-3. Let's get it poppin’ baby!!!!!
Okok I’m done. As a reminder, the rest of this newsletter will be purely experimental. It would be dope to receive feedback on how these segments are hitting for y’all. What’s working? What needs work? I want to hear it all. Today’s try-out is On Repeat with KB.
Thanks, and hope you had fun listening!
Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease,
KB