The day I left New York, I think, was the day New York had its first case as well. TAYLOR: Back in February, when the book came out, which feels like three lifetimes ago, I had my book tour all set. LONDRES: How were you imagining your year as a debut author, and how did the pandemic change things? TAYLOR: I went to get a deli sandwich for takeout yesterday and the woman was like, “Do you want to dine in?” And I was like, “What do you mean, do I want to dine in? There is a medical crisis happening in this country!” LONDRES: How is Iowa City? Are you starting to reopen? Here was another queer Black man from the South who read this book and understood it and had something to say about it in his own incredibly Jeremy way. Harris? Every writer’s dream, but also every writer’s nightmare, is a really astute writer and thinker reading your book.

Who wouldn’t want to be called that by Jeremy O. Harris in the New York Times review of Real Life ?īRANDON TAYLOR: Oh my gosh. MICHAEL LONDRES: What was it like being called a “dom” by Jeremy O. But what a boon for the literary world! Taylor recently spoke to us from his home in Iowa City about life in quarantine, and how he managed to finish a story collection and start his next novel while keeping anxiety at bay. And one thing we’ve learned from this crisis is that we need good people in science. Not only did science lose a great mind in Taylor it lost someone with a kind heart. The skin seemed smooth and chaste ” “frat boys, all in tank tops, their skin so healthy in the milky dusk light… they almost glowed with possibility”-expose the complex lattice of emotions underlying all that is mundane. His probing observations-“Miller’s thighs flashed. Taylor relishes in treading the line between science and art. Over the course of a steamy summer weekend, resentments, rivalries, and a nascent romance with a straight classmate reach their boiling points, and Wallace contemplates whether to stay or leave. Wallace, like Taylor once upon a time, is a biochem grad student navigating being black, gay, and Southern at a Midwestern university. Years of cutthroat competition and rampant microaggressions from colleagues and mentors alike convinced him that his path lay elsewhere.Īnd so, Taylor wrote Real Life, a brooding campus novel that’s lush in its interiority. In 2016, he walked away from a promising graduate career in biochemistry. But Taylor is no stranger to plot twists. Taylor was headed to a reading in Madison the day Wisconsin announced its first response to the coronavirus pandemic. Then, in the midst of his inaugural book tour, the world changed.

His debut novel, Real Life, was a literary breakthrough, garnering praise from the likes of Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell, and Jeremy O. This was not the publication year Brandon Taylor envisioned.

Brandon taylor new book