Going back to the '80s, we see Key's life consisting of nightclubs and enchantment. While training as a doula, she discovers that for her, the dead are much closer than expected and learns how to speak both to and for them, forming a connection between passed and living family members. After her death, Colly soon discovers that he shares the same sacred gift his mother had. More about this book >

• HONOREE 5 Under 35 2024 >

  Selected by Tiphanie Yanique >

  Tiphanie Yanique

  

  Tiphanie Yanique is the author of Monster in the Middle, a Lambda Literary Award and Townsend Prize for Fiction finalist; and Land of Love and Drowning, winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree for her collection of stories, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, which was the Fiction winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Yanique is also the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was the Poetry winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her writing has won the Boston Review Short Story Contest, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Pushcart Prize, and two Fulbright Scholarships. She is from the Virgin Islands and is a professor at Emory University. (Photo credit Kay Hynton)