This Black History Month, we want to highlight recent publications by Black Texan writers. We hope that you find something that interests you!
*Book descriptions are excerpted or adapted from the publisher’s book copy.
1. Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore – Char Adams (Tiny Reparations Books, 2025)
In this moment of increasing censorship, attending and buying from your local bookstore is more important now than ever.
“Black-Owned celebrates small businesses and their role in community building—and in liberation. Journalist Char Adams reports on how Black bookstores have always been at the center of resistance. This is a story of activism, espionage, violence, and perseverance.”
Adams is a reporter for NBC News and a former reporter for People. She is a proud Philadelphia native and now lives in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.
2. Fruit Punch: A Memoir – Kendra Allen (Harper Collins, 2022)
We’re excited to have Kendra back at Gemini Ink this Spring. She’s a talented poet, essayist, and novelist. Sign up for her April workshop, Telling a Story of Your Life: A Personal Essay Workshop. Keep an eye out for Kendra Allen’s forthcoming novel, Good Morning Means I Love You.
“Written in a distinctive voice, filled with personality, humor, and pathos, Fruit Punch is a memoir unlike any other from a one-of-a-kind millennial talent. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, in the nineties and early 2000s, Kendra Allen had a complicated, loving, and intense family life filled with desire and community but also undercurrents of violence and turmoil. “We equate suffering to perseverance and misinterpret the weight of shame,” she writes.”
Allen is the author of the memoir Fruit Punch, the poetry collection The Collection Plate, and the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, which won the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She writes a music column, “Make Love in My Car,” for Southwest Review.
3. Proprioception – C. Prudence Arceneaux (Texas Review Press, 2025)
Proprioception aptly captures a range of themes, including climate grief, sensuality, and intimacy.
“The poems move through ideas of race, of fear, of sexuality… trying to find a way to breathe every day in a now permanent upset of an already shaky imbalance.”
C. Prudence Arceneaux, a native Texan, is a poet who teaches English and Creative Writing at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in various journals, including The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Texas Observer, and others. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks; Dirt (awarded the 2018 Jean Pedrick Prize) and Liberty.
4. Pretty: A Memoir – K.B. Brookins (Knopf, 2024)
K.B. Brookins is a powerhouse of talent. They are a poet and memoirist deeply committed to their craft.
“Informed by Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency—whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people.”
Brookins (they/them) is a Black, queer, trans writer, and educator from Texas. Their poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize and a Stonewall Honor Book Award, and their poetry collection Freedom House received multiple national awards.
5. We Are Owed. – Ariana Brown (Grieveland, 2021)
Ariana Brown is a talented poet who offers a range of writing services, including classes and consultations. Her necessary perspectives on anti-Blackness in Mexican American history are part of what makes her a standout poet.
“We Are Owed. is the debut poetry collection of Ariana Brown, exploring Black relationality in Mexican and Mexican American spaces. Through poems about the author’s childhood in Texas and a trip to Mexico as an adult, Brown interrogates the accepted origin stories of Mexican identity. We Are Owed. asks the reader to develop a Black consciousness by rejecting U.S., Chicano, and Mexican nationalism and confronting anti-Black erasure and empire-building.”
Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from San Antonio, TX, now based in Houston. She is the author of the poetry collections We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). She is a national collegiate poetry slam champion, winner of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, and a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant.
6. Everything in Life is Resurrection: Selected Poems, 1982-2022 – Cyrus Cassells (TCU Press, 2025)
Cyrus Cassells has had a long and distinguished career as a poet in Texas, and this newest collection is an excellent place to begin if you’re new to his work. Drawn from eight acclaimed books and spanning forty years, Everything in Life is Resurrection: Selected Poems, 1982–2022 is his “long-awaited retrospective volume.” In her introduction, Ellen Hinsey calls Cassells “America’s foremost lyric poet,” noting that “the music he hears is intrinsically intertwined with the noise of the world’s destruction.”
Cassells is best known for his poetry books, which have earned numerous accolades, including the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Lambda Literary Award, and two Pulitzer Prize nominations. From 2021 to 2022, he served as Poet Laureate of Texas, during which he received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He is a Regents’ Professor and University Distinguished Professor of English at Texas State University, where he was also awarded the Presidential Excellence Award.
7. Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas – ed. by Amanda Johnston (Host Publications, 2025)
As the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate, Amanda Johnston created a project that reflected a range of Texan voices that celebrate everyday Texans. Johnston’s commitment to her communities is incredibly admirable. After reading Praisesong for the People, you will feel a renewed sense of joy.
This anthology includes a range of diverse and intersecting populations across age, gender, and BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, differently-abled, and immigrant communities. It features many familiar names such as C. Prudence Arceneaux, Kendra Allen, K.B. Brookins, drea brown, Aris Kian, Camari Carter Hawkins, Jasminne Mendez, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, Ebony Stewart, Alexandra van de Kamp, Eddie Vega, and many more.
Johnston is a writer, visual artist, the 61st Texas Poet Laureate, and founder of Torch Literary Arts. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press, 2017). In 2024, Johnston was appointed the Poet Laureate of Texas. In the same year, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
8. Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution – Peniel E. Joseph (Hachette, 2025)
In this moment of uncertainty and historical anxiety, it is important to look back and read about how other Americans have endured political hardships. If you’re looking to learn about lesser-known civil rights figures and history, Freedom Season is the book for you.
“Nineteen sixty-three opened with the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation and ended with America in a state of mourning. The months in between brought waves of racial terror, mass protest, and police repression that shocked the world, inspired radicals and reformers, and forced the hands of moderate legislators. By year’s end, the murders of John F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, and four Black girls at a church in Alabama left the nation determined to imagine a new way forward.”
Joseph is the author and editor of eight award-winning books on African American history, including The Third Reconstruction and The Sword and the Shield. He lives in Austin, Texas.
9. The Story of My Anger – Jasminne Mendez (Penguin Random House, 2025)
Jasminne Mendez’s The Story of My Anger follows the coming-of-age journey of an Afro-Latina teenager in Texas—a powerful story of identity and voice. We hope to see many more Texan Afro-Latina stories like this in the years to come.
“Yulieta Lopez is angry. Angry at her racist drama teacher who refuses to cast Black students in lead roles. Angry at the school board threatening her favorite teacher for teaching works of literature that they deem ‘controversial.’ But as the fire of Yuli’s rage spreads and lights her up, she can no longer be silent.”
Mendez is a two-time Pura Belpré Honor Award recipient and a Dominican-American poet, playwright, and author of several books for children and adults. Her book Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial), a novel in verse about a young girl diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and others.
10. Black Chameleon – Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton (Henry Holt, 2023)
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton’s memoir, Black Chameleon, weaves mythology, family history, and realism all in one. Make sure to check out her forthcoming children’s book, Hush Hush Hurricane.
“With a poet’s gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America.”
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally known writer, director, performer, critic, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. She is the author of the 2019 poetry collection Newsworthy, which was a finalist for the Writer’s League of Texas Book Award and received an Honorable Mention in the Summerlee Book Prize. She currently resides in Houston, Texas.
11. WASH – Ebony Stewart (Button Poetry, 2025)
Ebony Stewart is not only an incredible poet on the page, but also on the stage. Check out some of her performances through Button Poetry.
“Through trauma and recovery, black girlhood comes of age in WASH, journeying through moments of self-discovery, mental illness, love and heartbreak. Stewart reckons traditional definitions of womxnhood, exploring its complications, its communities, and its queerness.’”
Stewart, most affectionately known as Eb or Gully, is an author and international touring interdisciplinary artivist. As a Black womxn writer and performance artist, she harnesses the power of creativity to explore and challenge societal norms and personal identity. With a spellbinding blend of storytelling and raw emotion, she captivates audiences, inviting them into a world where vulnerability becomes strength.
12. City of Dis: A Novel-in-Verse – Randall James Tyrone (Texas Review Press, 2025)
Houston is a literary city, full of so much talent, including Randall James Tyrone.
“Tyrone’s debut collection City of Dis is a searing exploration of contemporary existence intertwined with medieval notions of damnation, invoking Dante’s “Inferno” to craft a modern-day epic. Doubling as a novel-in-verse, City of Dis follows the unnamed protagonist as they navigate a cityscape that is both a circle of hell and also the urban sprawl of 21st-century America.”
Tyrone resides in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Electric Literature’s Okey-Panky, Oversound Poetry, and Nomadic Press, and he has received a scholarship to attend the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Bentley-Buckman Poetry Fellowship. He’s very excited for you.
13. Palaver: A Novel – Bryan Washington (FSG Books, 2025)
Another Houston talent, Bryan Washington is a writer to watch—whether his stories unfold in Houston or halfway across the world.
In Palaver, a young man living in Tokyo builds a chosen family while navigating a complicated relationship with a married lover—until his estranged mother from Houston unexpectedly reappears.
Washington is the author of Palaver, Family Meal, Memorial, and Lot. A National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and two-time Lambda Literary Award recipient, he has also received an O. Henry Award and been named by The New York Times as among the 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature.
