A UC Irvine Master of Fine Arts graduate, Danzy Senna’s work explores gender, race and identity in America, often through the lens of multiracial characters. Her most recent book, “Colored Television,” features Jane, a biracial novelist, tempted away from working on a “mulatto ‘War and Peace’” to housesit at a wealthy television writer’s house. From this temporarily luxurious vantage point, Jane contemplates how different her life could be if she funneled her efforts away from novels and into “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies” in a manner by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and incisive. This bestselling novel was named a “Top 10 Book of the Year” by The Washington Post and one of The New York Times’ “Notable Books of 2024.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/721501/colored-television-a-gma-book-club-pick-by-danzy-senna/
“Indian Winter” by Kazim Ali (UC San Diego)
A professor of literature and creative writing at UC San Diego, Kazim Ali has published poetry, fiction, nonfiction and translations for two decades, founding the influential nonprofit literary press Nightboat Books along the way. His most recent work is “Indian Winter,” a novel whose protagonist, a queer author, departs for India and attempts to process the death of someone with whom he had a relationship long ago. “I have to get away from this small town and all its dangers,” the narrator explains, “to write, read, think, all the most important things in the world but which are thought the least important, the most expendable.”
https://chbooks.com/Books/I/Indian-Winter
Fantasy / Science Fiction
“The Black Bird Oracle” by Deborah Harkness (UC Davis)
Morocco
