Reverse-Gentrification of the Literary World

Akashic Books

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News & Features

“Falconer” by S.J. Rozan

Tuguldur didn’t like the city.

His father had never come, nor his father’s father. Nothing called them. They drove their herds to the ridges, within sight of the distant towers and haze, and sold them to middlemen. They turned their horses when the business was done and rode back to the steppe, to the autumn camps and their families and the young, strong animals that would survive the howling winter and fatten in the spring . . .

“The White Gyal with the Camera” by Kei Miller (from Kingston Noir)

It was when the papers come out with the gyal’s picture print big and broad on the front page that August Town people did find out her rightful name. Marilyn Fairweather. It sounded right. It sounded like a white woman’s name. But for the six days she had been in August Town we had just called her “the white gyal with the camera.” Or “the white gyal” for short.

Black Sheep YA Imprint Featured in Publishers Weekly

Claire Kirch at Publishers Weekly has written an article that features Akashic’s new Black Sheep YA imprint. From the article: “Emphasizing that Black Sheep titles will respect the conventions in YA literature—there not be excessive sex, profanity, or violence—and that they will appeal to ‘reluctant readers’ as well as to readers looking for books that […]

“Get Well, Seymour!” by Joe Meno (from Demons in the Spring)

The girl playing badminton is the one. But I don’t want to believe it. It is because her legs are so shapely and long and, in their stunning whiteness, betray a winter spent indoors. Her ankles are well-sculpted, her knees pinkly glowing, and there is something about her slender wrists that suggests the modest charms of aristocracy. I don’t care much about the rest of her. It is the shape of her shadow, the way she stands there bored in the shade of the cruise ship’s upper decks in a green skirt with white tennis socks pulled past her shins; I watch her lean over as she traces something with the edge of her racket, some invisible word or shape in the air. She is daydreaming and the picture she makes in the middle of the ocean liner is one of absolute splendor. I hear the sound of her laughter as the shuttlecock flies her way, her laugh which is not the kind of haughty one you’d expect from a girl who looks the way she does, and suddenly I’ve lost my nerve . . .