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National Book Foundation > Author > Naima Coster
Naima Coster is the author of two novels. Her debut, Halsey Street, was a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. More about this author >
Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. More about this book >
Selected by Tayari Jones >
Naima Coster is the author of two novels. Her debut, Halsey Street, was a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It was recommended as a must-read by People, Essence, BitchMedia, The Root, Well-Read Black Girl, The Skimm, and the Brooklyn Public Library among others.
Naima’s forthcoming novel, What’s Mine and Yours, is the story of the integration of a public high school in a small Southern city, and the resulting chain of events that bonds two families together in unexpected and complicated ways over the course of their lives. It will be published by Grand Central Publishing in March 2021.
Naima’s stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Rumpus, Aster(ix), Kweli, The Paris Review Daily, The Cut, The Sunday Times, and elsewhere. She has taught writing to students in jail, youth programs, and universities. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.