In celebration of this year’s Black History Month, I’ve decided to focus on some awesome black authors who are currently making history. Raven Leilani’s debut novel Luster was a revelation in many ways. The book is spellbinding (to use publishing world, book-jacket speak) but also terribly funny and tender. It’s the kind of book where you are afraid to google the author’s age because you know from the brilliant freshness of the prose that she will be younger than you, while at the same time you are hoping you could ever be half as wise, or see things quite as sharply. In other words, if you haven’t already, read this book.

And while you’re at it, check out this piece about the author from WWD, published back in August 2020.

“I didn’t want the Black characters in this book to be defined primarily by the pain that they can endure, or the isolation that they are trying to reconcile,” says Leilani. “And in this way, bringing two Black women together, though they are in two different parts of their lives of the self-actualization, it was a way to explore the joy of community, the complexity of community.”